2016-10-20
Innovative public service?
“Bureaucracy, “slowness”, “obsolete technology”, “inadequate financial resources”, “poor service quality”. These are among the descriptions that come to mind when we think of the public administration. Is bringing together these two contrasting worlds even conceivable?
The Ministry of Planning, Development and Budget (Ministério do Planejamento, Desenvolvimento e Gestão) decided to converge these two opposite – or, perhaps, complementary – extremes as part of the action proposal presented under the aegis of the 8th Call and 2016 Extra-Call of the Sector Dialogues Support Facility.
But how best to organise this plethora of concepts? The first step was to provide an open space for discussion and new ideas: The Innovation in Public Management Week – Transforming Ideas into Solutions (A Semana de Inovação em Gestão Pública – Transformando Ideias em Soluções). The event was held in 2015 and included the participation of public servants from 16 Brazilian states as well as 50 national and international representatives invited to speak, participate in discussion panels and serve as debate moderators. A tangible outcome of the effort was a letter of intentions concluded between Brazil and Denmark, subsequently formalized through signing of a memorandum of understanding between the two countries. The larger objective of the cooperation initiative was to foster a Culture of Innovation in Public Management in Brazil.
Following the event, the National School of Public Administration (Escola Nacional de Administração Pública – ENAP) joined the effort. The first step was the implementation and inauguration on of the G-NOVA, Innovation in Management Laboratory, August 17, 2016, aimed at contributing to federal government projects. The laboratory was inspired on Denmark’s MindLab and conceived as a space for stimulating the convergence of innovative ideas. It was created to “show federal public servants that the ultimate outcome of collaborative approaches to joint creation that engage service users is a service delivery that more closely adheres to the respective needs it was intended to meet”, according to Luis Felipe Salin Monteiro, director of the Department of Management Modernization (Departamento de Modernização da Gestão – INOVA), a component unit of the Ministry of Planning, responsible for developing the action proposal within the framework of the Sector Dialogues Support Facility. The LABORATORY – the name itself is revealing – is a place for experimentation. Unbound by barriers that limit expression, the space allows ideas to be presented, discussed, designed, and tested before they are applied to us ordinary citizens. The laboratory is a space trial and error, where creativity is stimulated: something akin to the process by which a prescription drug is developed and tested in a laboratory setting prior to being taken to market. The idea is to reduce the attendant risks and costs of policy implementation, and, ultimately, increase success rates.
Note the incorporation of new terms to the vocabulary of innovation: cooperation and convergent ideas. Now add to that public agencies in the three branches of government and we arrive at the final product of Innovation Week: The Public Sector Innovation Network, or, as it is more affectionately known, InovaGov. The name itself describes the initiative, a network of interconnected points, devoid of hierarchical stratification, through which synergistic exchanges are enabled, consisting of continuous feedback between the Laboratory and Network members. As Guilherme Almeida, ENAP Director of Innovation, notes, “the laboratory is not just a member of the network, but an active link in the system”, serving as a space for group discussions and experimentation.
The action proposal to organise the InovaGov was presented to the Sector Dialogues Support Facility as part of the Extra Call. To facilitate implementation, experts were contracted to introduce new work dynamics to contribute to the initiative’s development. A total of 38 federal institutions representing the three branches of government (Judicial, Legislative and Executive) have joined the network through formal signing of a Technical Cooperation Agreement executed with the representative of each government branch. The action represents an added stimulus to cooperation that “helps government agencies work together to overcome barriers and devise solutions to address the challenges they encounter.” Or as Luanna Sant’Anna Roncaratti, Innovation Manager at the Ministry of Planning, puts it, the initiative is a tool “for coordinating and integrating innovation strategies in the public sector”.
This is just one of the many ways in which the Sector Dialogues Support Facility contributes to shaping an improved and more effective public service!
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