The post-1999 reforms have given rise to a plethora of ‘programs’ and ‘initiatives’, mostly designed to achieve what one might expect to be part of the normal day-to-day activities of departments, agencies and sub-national governments (but which clearly have not been). Inevitably perhaps, much of what is listed in the goals and guiding principles of these programs and initiatives consists of broad, uncontroversial statements of intention; nevertheless experience suggests that it is sometimes useful to spell out what might seem obvious, especially if in spelling out objectives and strategies one can provide a framework within which specific problems may be identified, addressed and monitored. As several people, including Prime Minister Somare, have observed, what has been lacking in public sector reform in Papua New Guinea in the past has been not so much sound policies as a commitment to implement them at all levels of government.

In the proliferation of new initiatives, some of them largely donor-driven, there is a danger that overall coordination becomes more difficult. It is clear that many public servants (and advisers), including some senior officers, have an incomplete knowledge of the range of new activities being introduced. This is exacerbated by the facts that key documents are often almost impossible to obtain,^[12] that increasing demands on the time of senior officers means that they frequently delegate or miss attendance at joint committee meetings, and that rapid turnover of staff (not to mention the retrenchment of a generation of middle managers with extensive field experience) shortens collective departmental memories. It is also clear that there is a significant knowledge gap between Waigani and the provincial capitals, district headquarters, and local-level government wards.