I recently resigned from the Parliamentary Budget Office, where I have been working for the last two years, and accepted a post in the economics department at the University of Johannesburg. I’m really looking forward to getting back into academic work full time.
Subsequent to my departure, I had this article published in Business Day on the under-rated importance of the PBO and what it should be doing
As I note in that piece, there is no sensible justification for devoting significant resources to organising a conference of this type when the office is (as noted in various speeches by political administrators) so heavily under-resourced, and should be focusing on its core legislated mandate. Nevertheless, some of the contributions from local and international experts provide a very nice characterisation of what PBOs should do, what they should not do, and how they can best serve the public interest. The general Parliament administration has actually done a great job on the multimedia front, so the conference presentations can be found here and the video feed can be found on YouTube. The majority of presentations from external experts are worth watching.
Now that I am back in academia, I will be writing a lot more about public finance issues, as well as the role of the PBO. And hopefully posting more regularly on strictly academic subjects as well.