DPM Officer Graduates as Valedictorian
Department of Personnel Management’s Policy and Review Coordination Officer Mr. David Kawage graduated as the top student with a certificate in Governance and Public Policy (Social Research Methods) that was undertaken at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia.
Mr. Kawage along with Senior Public Service Reforms officer with the Strategic Policy Development branch Ms. Almalyn Bambam were amongst twenty-three other public servants from various government departments in both the National Capital District and the provinces who graduated with their certificates in Governance and Public Policy.
He said it was an honor for him to graduate as a valedictorian of his class which inspired him to have higher career goals in order to be an agent of change in the department, his family and his community as a whole.
He extended his gratitude to DPM Secretary Ms. Taies Sansan, Chairman L&D Committee, Executive Manager for Strategic Policy Development Ms. Ida Yuki and the SPD team for their endearing support throughout the duration of the course.
Mr. Kawage said he plans on utilizing the Problem Driven Interactive Adaptation (PDIA) tool which is a learning by doing approach that helps organization develop the capability to solve complex problems, in his daily roles and responsibilities at work.
“The critical reading and writing skills gained is very helpful in my role as a policy officer. The social research methods and analytical skills imparted was very invaluable and have significantly aided me to understand the importance of developing evidence-based policies to provide accurate policy based advice in a timely manner to reflect the realistic state or condition of the policy agenda,” says Kawage.
Mr. Kawage said a highlight of the course was being nominated as the team leader by his cohorts and leading and representing them as the point of contact in all professional engagements within the University of Queensland in Australia.
He aspires to be a team player and believes that he is ready in terms of technical capacity to take on board new challenging tasks with the skills and competencies gained from this course.
Apart from fulfilling the academic requirements of the University of Queensland participants as awardees of the scholarship were required by Australian Awards PNG to provide a work-place based research project.
“My research project emanated from the exit strategy which is a key result area of our division. The title of my research project was “Retirement Exit Database system” said Kawage.
“The objective of my research was to address the brain drain caused by the aging workforce as a result of the government incentive retirement program. The database will be a search engine and a platform that will create a pool of retirees with corporate knowledge to be re-engaged on short-term contracts to transfer institutional knowledge and experiences to the younger workforce,” said Mr. Kawage. He added that a concept paper has been designed from the research project and will be presented to the executive Management Team in the near future.