Background
The Government of Samoa (GoS) is committed to identifying training and Human Resource Development needs and linking these to different training modes such as scholarships, short term training opportunities outside of Samoa and in-country training. In Country Training (ICT) has been available for Samoa since 1993.
From 1997 until June 2006, the Samoa Public Service Commission (PSC) was the counterpart organization for ICT and it identified training needs that could be met by the ICT Programme. The ICT initially targeted the public sector and gradually extended out to the private and non governmental sectors in line with GoS’s development focus. The public reforms of the 1990s saw the need to enhance the skills of the public sector in order to achieve the desired outcomes of these reforms
The Samoa In Country Training Programme had been in existence in various forms since 1997. This capacity building initiative was conducted, managed and funded separately by the governments of Australia through AusAID and the government of New Zealand through NZAID. AusAID focused on technical training. Accordingly, the SICTP in its inception phases had two separate policy frameworks. In 2004/2005 NZAID and AusAID harmonized their funding and management arrangements under the management of the PeopleandProjects Ltd as the managing services contractor.
In 2003, the GoS and the New Zealand government commenced discussions about localization of ICT within the PSC. In January 2004, the PSC advised that it could not assume this responsibility given the restructural reforms the public sector had undertaken. Subsequently, official coordination of the SICTP was moved from the PSC to the Oloamanu Professional Development Centre (OPDC) of the National University of Samoa (NUS) in 2006. The PeopleandProjects Ltd managed the SICTP until July 1, 2008 when management was officially transferred to Oloamanu Professional Development Centre.
In the 10 year period that training has been conducted under the SICTP, the main training evaluation and assessment tools were the training questionnaires and the tracer studies. These assessment tools do not adequately reflect impact (if any) of the SICTP on the three targeted sectors.