Batch 5: Public Service and Public Governance Demonstration

Tonga’s Ministry of Information provides information for the people of Tonga locally and internationally. It promotes transparency and accountability of its operations, activities, policies and programs by providing information in many specific areas. The ministry thrives for excellence and pride itself with making information available and its cornerstone of good governance is providing universal access to information and greater public awareness.

The Ministry of Information public service provided for the people any necessary information required. Tonga is in a process of shifting to e-government which is the current services that the ministry is challenging itself with. Other governmental departments are all following suit spearheaded by this ministry as well as providing consultancy to the other ministries. It is the ministry’s hope that within the next two to three years, this migration can be finalized. The Government of Tonga’s information scattered throughout various departments such as the Palace Office, Prime Minister’s Office, Ministry of Communication, and others and the Ministry of Information is slowly taking away bit by bit information from all these ministries and consolidating it to the ministry of information’s jurisdiction.

The Ministry of Information has specific areas that required specific policies in place since this is the newest and newly added ministry to the governmental portfolios. Areas in need of policy formulation of existing services are; internet, social media, television, newspaper, telephones, mobile phones, handheld devices, radio, tele-radio communication, yellow pages & white pages on phone book, archives, almanac, printed mediums, governmental departments’ information, words of mouth, traditional sources, outdoor billboards and myths and legends.

The discovery that the ministry is in need of public service policy was a concern during my tenure as an intern. The assistance provided by the ASU intern was delivering this ministry with an in-depth and comprehensive policy guideline called “A Better Informative Tonga”. The short term plan is formulating a better working policy for the ministry in order for the long term goal of migrating to e-government to provide all the necessary information for not only the people of Tonga but also to future stakeholders and investors who are looking into investing capital in Tonga. 

Batch 5: Free Write 3 – Hunger Games Trilogy

I am a big fan of Suzanne Collins trilogy books of Hunger Games, Catching Fire and Mockingjay. I have read these books cover to cover four times, and am about to read the third book Mockingjay one more time before the movies of Mockingjay 2 comes out November 20, 2015. I have the collection of these three books on hard cover all first edition.

Three of my nieces Alyzzah, Tina and Mafi are diehard fans of the books, the movies, DVD collections, and numerous t-shirts and other decals. They were the ones that got me hooked. Five years ago during a flight from San Francisco to Kona, Hawaii I saw each of my nieces with a soft pack of Hunger Games. I actually borrowed one of the Hunger Game books from one of my nieces to read in Hawaii one day. I got hooked then.

I purchased my first edition collection on the second book and the third book. Each time that I bought my books, I would buy three other books and mailed them to each of my nieces as early Christmas gifts. I also bought the DVD for my collections and each time that I did that, I would buy three more DVDs for each of my nieces. My nieces had treasured their book collections as well as their DVD collection. I am sure they are expecting me to buy them the DVD for Mockingjay Part 2. I think I will.

I am excited with anticipation for the last movie of The Hunger Games trilogy for November 20^th. I am taking my niece Mafi to see it, and my niece and I already planned a date for November 20^th. I already purchased two online tickets for my niece Alyzzah who lives in Portland, Oregon and two more for my other niece Tina who lives in Palo Alto, California. The four of us are going to Skype each other Thursday night, the night before the movie and probably Skype again on Saturday to discuss the outcome of the movie. The Hunger Games trilogy had made an impact on me and my three nieces.  

Batch 5: Free Write 2 – Halloween

I grew up in a country that never celebrated Halloween season. Lately in the last four years, Tonga is beginning to adopt what America does during Halloween by businesses stocking up on candies and costumes, and children going out of their way to dress for Halloween. The culture in Tonga is changing rapidly due to western influences.

It is amazing to see these changes in Tonga especially in a country that has strong religious fundamentalism and tough cultural belief. The first two years in Tonga were tough because a lot of religious groups were against demonizing outfits, sexual natured attires, and witchcraft and wizardry costumes. Some of the businesses in the downtown district were challenged with some of the Christian groups standing outside with their banners criticizing these businesses but also condemning people who are out shopping for Halloween. Although the local businesses and people are still receiving disapproval from various religious groups in the last two years, however not as much as the two prior years. Tonga is slowly embracing change or perhaps religious groups are giving up.

There is this bar in Tonga called Nauti Ruby owned by two of my best friends. They used to live in Australia, so their style and influence in Tonga is seen throughout their business activities. They also had received numerous attacks from religious groups but they don’t care. According to them, Halloween nights at their bar received gigantic revenue sales and Halloween usually is their third largest bar sales in the year and the most sold out nights at the door.

Batch 5: Free Write 1 – All You Can Eat Buffet

My favorite all you can eat buffet restaurant here in Arizona is located in Chandler called Pacific Seafood Restaurant. I love seafood and most of the seafood that I love, prefer to eat them all raw. There are so many seafood restaurants here in Arizona and I love some of them, but my favorite all you can eat seafood buffet restaurant has to be awarded to Pacific Seafood Restaurant.

 I grew up in Tonga where most of the food that we eat is from the sea, and most cases we eat most of all the seafood raw. My most favorite at Pacific Seafood is the raw oysters. Just squeeze lemons on top and a little bit of soya sauce and devour. I had dinner here just last Friday and I ate about 24 oysters. I also love their sushi bar where you can get all the raw fish such as tuna, seared ahi, salmon and red snapper. There are other varieties to include one of my favorites eel rolls. The other salad bar, I love to get my raw mussels from there also.

There are other varieties of food that I also enjoy when I visit Pacific Seafood Restaurant. From the cooked sections, I enjoy the crawfish, shrimps, mussels, clams, and tilapia. There are other cooked foods that I ignore completely when I visit because I would rather eat nothing but seafood. I completely ignore meat because I can get that from all you can eat meat at Golden Corral Restaurant and ignore salads completely for I can get that from Olive Gardens with their all can you eat salads.  

So last Friday I ate eight plates showed on the pictures. My last two plates were crab legs dipping in hot butter.

 I ate three times last week at this restaurant, and hopefully one or two more this week. We Tongans love to eat and let me tell you, we can eat and that is why all you can eat restaurants go out of business basically because of people like me who eat for about three people each time. Perhaps the restaurant should charge us three for one. This is my favorite all you can eat seafood restaurant here in the valley. Try it out if you are ever in the Chandler area.  

Batch 4 – Leadership

Leadership played an important role in my internship especially when I was put into an office with direction to research and write up a policy guideline for the Ministry of Information as roadmap. I wanted to be a great ambassador for Arizona State University and displayed the quality of education I had acquired and put it into practice. I demonstrated good practices of hard work, being a good role model, initiating change and most importantly complete the task at hand. Self-management, leadership dynamics in personifying inspiration for other employees, positive corroboration, strengthening innovation amongst staff members, highlighting team work, boosting confidence with co-workers and providing constructive criticism for growth within the ministry.  

Ministry of Information is a newly created ministry to oversee all governmental information. There is a director with four other employees who were overwhelmed with many job responsibilities. It was a win-win situation where I learned from them and they learned from me. It was such an eye opener for me to see that Tonga lacks so much initiatives. There were numerous things that needed improvements and several challenges that required immediate attention and should be addressed.

There were so many leadership skill sets were put to practice while interning such as providing motivation, simplifying an issue and creating logical decisions, offering constructive criticism, organizing and planning as well as creating objectives, spearheading change and initiative on flexible response to demanding situations and revolution of internet influxes in Tonga.

The director of the department portrayed his leadership role by supporting everything that I was recommending. His qualification was on information technology and he was extremely qualified, talented and know everything there was to know about computers, software, hardware, and governmental needs for computer information. He was lack the policy formulation which he actually allowed me to help him with. This provided me an opportunity indeed to freely go about my thorough research and finished writing up a comprehensive report and a 55 pages policy guideline.

Batch 4 – Free Write – My New Neighbor

I have lived in this apartment complex for almost three years with no issues or problems. This month, a new neighbor just moved into the apartment upstairs on top of me. I was away overseas during summer when my neighbor to my right moved in, and the ones on top of them moved in simultaneously.

During the three years that I have lived here, three different people had moved in and had moved out from the upstairs apartment, and I had never had a problem with them. This new neighbor has no respect for others and causing me to look into ways to break my lease. I have made five complaints to management. I have made complaints to the corporate office via telephone and email. And finally something came through this week.

Smoking had never bothered me until now. It is alright for people to smoke but please don’t flick the ashes and cigarette butts downstairs. The upstairs people don’t respect people who live downstairs especially when their cigarettes’ ashes and butts are being dumped right in front of my walkway to my house. I have this beautiful American Indian rug that I bought at the Yavapai/McDowell Reservation and it’s dirty and filthy from their creation.

My lease is up at the end of November and I just can’t wait to move out. Maybe this is a blessing in disguise, it is time for me to leave this apartment and find something closer to downtown Phoenix.

Batch Four - Interview

I had the opportunity to interview Mr. John Pombier who is the deputy city manager of the City of Mesa. As a public policy and public affairs major, one aspires to city management and public administration within the city level and jurisdiction. Although I didn’t intern for this city, however I have always hoped to learn from city governance and its contribution to not only the citizens living in that city but also to the state. The most important thing that I want to learn from a city especially Mesa is the economic development that contributes to employment, healthcare, diversity, religions, improvements to social issues, amongst other things.  

Mr. Pombier currently overlooks facilities maintenance, human resources, solid waste, police, fire, fleet services and the public information for the City of Mesa. According to him these services made up 67% of the City of Mesa’s services. The city manager for Mesa is Chris Brady. Mesa is the 38^th largest city in America with a fast growing population. I have lived in Mesa for almost three years now, and before I am going to move to Phoenix would like to know information pertaining to the city’s public officials, citizen participation, economic resources that finances this city, city’s innovations and the city’s emergency preparedness in terms of natural disasters and terrorist threats.  

John Pombier received his Bachelor of Business Administration from the University of Michigan, and his Juris Doctor from the Arizona State University. Previously he was a city prosecutor for the City of Phoenix, deputy general counsel for the State of Arizona’s Governor’s office and former city prosecutor for the City of Mesa from 2003 – 2011 until he was promoted to deputy city manager in 2011, a position he holds to date.

He informed me that his resume is not the typical one for a management position in the city. He doesn’t have a master of public administration degree as most of the city managers have. This was not his career anticipated when he started his career long time ago. His advised was that people with passion to work for public services and to help make a change are the true pioneers of public administration. There were many challenges that he was faced with as a city manager such as lack of quality control by public officials and in adequate economic resources. He had overcame these challenges by hiring the best employees for the city, empowered the staff to step up and make decisions with due diligence, there are more citizen involvements now, there is reserve provisions and the great innovations for the city.

His contributions to the city included but not limited to team up resources and innovation to modify the best possible choices in favor of sustainability, quality of life versus quality of money, improved productivity, improved services and improved crisis response. He was very optimistic about the future, sustainable methods for improvement on core services, higher level of service for the city, better reserves and overhead and a robust future decisions. In terms of future trends, he is extremely concerns with online reliance of this generation. Everyone seemed to be attached to their handheld devices and that is not so much a good thing. He mentioned that his son is taking online classes from home towards his degree. The negative downfall of this is that his son wouldn’t be able to interact with others outside. He would prefer that the next generation doesn’t rely too much with technology and get out more to interact with other people outside the realms of doing everything online.

One is interested in this type of work because one envisioned a future with becoming a consultant for my country in city governance, city policy formulations, and making a difference to third world country. The wealth of knowledge, training, first-hand information, mentoring that are acquired here in the United States would contribute to improvements, sustainable innovations, climate change preparedness, energy efficiency and overall administration and policy impact for my home country Tonga.