Public management is developed within the framework of an institutionality included within the political organization, which in turn is a distinctive element of the State; any deficiency in any of these elements has a decisive impact on the performance of the other; for this reason, a particularized analysis must necessarily go through the integral theoretical, legal and practical approach of all the concepts in each context.
Generally speaking, have States been incorporating technological innovation and new management practices into public administration?
Technological development and the use of the Internet are evolving rapidly, enabling in all areas an endless number of alternatives that can be managed efficiently through ICT. The public administrations of the States are not exempt from this reality, as this environment increasingly affects the expectations of citizens who, supported by the use of digital platforms, demand better performance from public services.
For this reason, digitalization in the public sector becomes a pressing issue that requires the implementation of organizational changes that incorporate new technologies in aspects such as: simplification of administrative procedures, improvement of public services, optimization of costs, access to public information, increased citizen satisfaction due to increased efficiency and transparency in government management.
Currently, the development of technologies and the use of social networks applied to the public sector has generated a new concept of public management called e-Government, electronic government or digital government.
In this context, States are designing technological innovation plans that allow them to enter the digital era. Among them, we can highlight Denmark, highlighted by the United Nations as the most electronic administration in the world in 2019.
Likewise, the experience of Spain stands out, where legislative reforms have been implemented that require digital public services to be increasingly present in administrative procedures such as: income tax returns, health procedures, applications, renewal of identity documents, invoicing, income declarations, among others.
In Latin America, initiatives such as the “Secretary of Productive Simplification” in Argentina, the “Simple State, Agile Colombia” or the “Zero Paper and Zero Line” in Chile stand out. Also notable are the legal reforms that promote infogovernment in Peru with the implementation of the “State Operability Platform.” In Brazil, ICTs for public procedures allow for savings of millions of dollars. In Mexico, the majority of government procedures can be done through digital platforms. The same can be said of countries such as Uruguay and Panama, which are advancing innovation and digitalization projects.
Do States usually carry out impact assessments of public policies for accountability and social collaboration?
In a context in which civil society demands results and accountability from leaders and governors, evaluation has become an instrument that must be considered as an integral part of public decision-making. It is defined as an activity that allows the performance of public action to be assessed, and constitutes one of the phases of the public policy cycle of transcendental importance.
Initially, evaluation focused on the mechanisms for programming, implementing and executing projects or programs. More recently, emphasis has been placed on evaluation that measures the impact of public interventions.
With regard specifically to impact assessment, it is important to highlight that its purpose is to verify and measure to what degree the results obtained in the problem addressed are a direct and exclusive consequence of the execution of the program or public policy evaluated, so it is not only a matter of knowing whether the problem that gave rise to the intervention underwent any positive change, what matters is that it was a concrete consequence of public management.
Currently, most administrations are in arrears with respect to their obligation to evaluate the effectiveness, efficiency, results and impact of their programs, policies and projects. This is gambling data taiwan due, on the one hand, to the lack of political will on the part of public directors and managers to implement evaluation as a work tool. And, on the other hand, to the resistance of public workers who deny or are unaware of its benefits, perceiving it as a threat that will bring an overload to their daily work.
Corruption is a common issue in many countries. Do you think that more efficient public management will make corruption cases in public administrations more difficult?
Corruption is defined as the abuse of authority or distrust for private gain. Without a doubt, the implementation of best practices in public management prevents this scourge that has caused so much harm to our countries. The practices carried out to combat it should not be limited only to the sanction of legal norms, they should be accompanied by other strategies that affect institutional operation, related to the modernization of the Administration and its control mechanisms in the areas of planning, budgeting, budget execution, administrative procedures for authorizing procedures, public contracts, among others. Therefore, the regulatory apparatus that classifies corrupt behavior as crimes is not enough; these laws do not prevent corruption per se ; institutional internal control instruments are needed that operationalize surveillance and fraud detection mechanisms in order to proceed with the respective sanctions.
Starting from the fact that poor public management creates greater incentives and possibilities for corruption and that legal regulations alone do not solve the problem, it is necessary to identify pernicious discretionary powers that must be eradicated because they are hotbeds of corrupt practices, among which we can highlight:
Excessive government intervention in economic activity through the imposition of price and currency controls, import and export restrictions, and tax exemption policies.
The absence of accountability.
The lack of professionalization of public officials and their low remuneration.
The absolute and direct management of the State over economic and financial matters.
Closed public planning and budgeting processes that limit citizen participation.
Weak and deficient tax systems.
Replacing these realities with an environment that guarantees a solid private sector with respect for the right to property, a transparent judicial system, and a stable and fair tax system will prevent corruption and stimulate savings and internal and external private investment, which will result in a better quality of life for the population.
In itself, good public management will largely prevent corruption and the absence of corruption will positively impact the quality of public management and economic growth in general.
Could you give us an example of a case in which the State has managed to integrate public administration with management in an effective manner?
There are many successful experiences in different States that have managed to create national, state or local public administrations made up of institutions with clear objectives whose purpose is to intervene in the area of their competence, social problems through policies, programs or projects to which public resources are allocated.
Many of these institutions implement best practices from their organization that allow them to establish internal management controls that are applied transversally to each and every one of the processes developed, be they planning, budgeting, execution of public management and evaluation of results and impacts, all with the active participation of citizens as recipients and beneficiaries of these public policies.
Among many of them we can highlight the following:
Colombia:
Government entity: Caldas Governorate
Public Policy: Caldas free of Coca Crops
General Objective: Control of Illicit Crops
Summary: The project is an institutional initiative of a comprehensive model of good practices in territorial management of the Government of Caldas, which was built with a social, public and collective approach, directed towards the comprehensive solution of problems that affected communities, where the articulation, teamwork and deployment of Public Policies, show the transformation of areas that were affected by coca crops and that today are a territory of opportunities.
Results: Caldas, the first department in Colombia free of illicit crops
Government entity: Mayor's Office of Bogotá
Public Policy: Innovation Laboratory for Social Organizations
General Objective: Citizen Empowerment
Summary: The Social Organizations Innovation Laboratory of the Participation Institute facilitates spaces in which citizens themselves can prioritize their problems, decide collectively what is the best way to solve them, and with the accompaniment of experts, generate their own changes.
Government entity: Palmira City Hall
Public Policy: Participatory Budget – PP – as a program for local development coordination
General Objective: General Population of the territory
Summary: Low social and economic development in rural areas of the municipality of Palmira and distrust of the inhabitants in the local Public Administration, which caused a lack of legitimacy in the institutions and unrest among the inhabitants of the rural area - who represent 98.1% of the territory
To solve the problem, the administration designed and implemented a “Participatory Budget Management Model – PP” that enabled the active participation of citizens in decision-making regarding prioritization and allocation of resources, based on the following differentiating elements: (a) dialogue with urban and rural communities to carry out strategic projects agreed upon and chosen by the community; (b) creation of a system for the management of the participatory budget based on references from national instruments and (c) design of monitoring routines aimed at improving the entity's processes.
