Assessment and Streamline of Public Services (BR0093)

Lead government institution Ministry of Planning, Development, and Management Civil servant in charge for implementing at lead government institution Elise Sueli Pereira Gonçalves Position - Department General Coordinator/ Data and Public Services Coordination E-mail elise.goncalves@planejamento.gov.br Telephone 55 61 2020-1123 Other involved actors Government Ministry of Planning, Development, and Management Ministry of Transparency, Oversight and Comptroller General of Brazil Brazilian Telecommunications Agency (Anatel) Government Secretariat Ministry of Justice and Citizenship Brazilian Micro and Small Enterprises Support Service (SEBRAE) Civil society, private sector, group of workers and multilateral actors Brazilian Institute for Consumer Defense (Idec) MariaLab Hackerspace Claimhere (Reclame Aqui) Protest (Proteste) Microsoft Status quo or problem/issue to be addressed The need of enhancing accountability in the public services provision, with organization liaison and civil society collaboration, mainly from users Main objective To develop methodologies and tools for a public service evaluation, by its users. Those instruments motivate citizens to take part inthe management, as well as those promote simplification and improvement of public services on the federal level. Commitment short description Find ways of disseminating information about public policies and services, whilst developing and enhancing methods and evaluation tools, fostering a more effective social participation OGP Challenge addressed by the Commitment Improvement of Public Services More effective public resources management Corporative accountability increment Commitment relevance Promoting public services improvement and evaluation Goal Increment of collaboration among many actors, more access to information and services, data better organized for managerial analysis, and establishment of amelioration commitments

10. Assessment and Streamline of Public Services

Commitment Text:

Undertake inventory of Federal Executive Branch services and implement an assessment through mechanisms of satisfaction, prioritizing services

The commitment aimed to Find ways of disseminating information about public policies and services, whilst developing and enhancing methods and evaluation tools, fostering a more effective social participation, with the intent of facing two big problems: i) disarticulation between government and civil society; ii) neediness of information by citizens.

10.1 – Platform for inventory and methodology, with manual

10.2 – Content scope definition – arrange a meeting, in order to establish a research scope with the civil society about the evaluation content

10.3 – Conduct research and analysis functionality requirements for the implementation of evaluation mechanisms at the Service Portal

10.4 – Data inclusion by organizations at the Portal, in accordance with methodology/standards set

10.5 – Implementation – joint effort between the Ministry and the civil society, in order to develop Portal functionality and a library for open applications (this content needs to be discussed for the functionality)

10.6 – Diffusion - joint effort with the civil society for promoting diffusion actions

10.7 – Making user evaluation device and its outcomes available

Responsible institution: Ministry of Planning, Development, and Management

Supporting institutions: Ministry of Transparency, Oversight and Comptroller General of Brazil, Brazilian Telecommunications Agency (Anatel), Government Secretariat , Ministry of Justice and Citizenship, Brazilian Micro and Small Enterprises Support Service (SEBRAE), Brazilian Institute for Consumer Defense (Idec), MariaLab Hackerspace, Reclame Aqui, Proteste, Microsoft

Start date: December 2016.. End date: November 2018

Context and Objectives

The government recognizes the need to enhance accountability for public services at the federal level, particularly by collaborating with civil society and hearing from the end users of services. To achieve this goal, the government commits to undertake and inventory federal executive branch services and to implement better methodologies for users to evaluate public services.

This commitment aims to improve public service metrics that help citizens evaluate the services they receive. This goal aligns with similar international initiatives, such as the International Budget Partnership.[1] The government has been working on this policy strategy for more than 10 years.[2] Citizen feedback, and particularly end-user perspectives, is important to improving e-government metrics and public services.[3]

The commitment's level of specificity is medium. It lists the key deliverable as the development and implementation of data functionality on the existing public service portal (https://servicos.gov.br/). The government outlines a series of intermediate steps that will contribute to the design and implementation of the final product. Those steps include a methodology, a meeting to determine the scope of the evaluations, and dissemination. However, the expected features and scope of the new data functionality are unclear.

The commitment is related to the OGP values of access to information and civic participation, with the use of technology and innovation to achieve its objectives. The commitment’s goal involves working with citizens to enhance mechanisms for evaluating public services and publishing the results on the public service portal.

The commitment has a minor potential impact. The government has executed major portal updates since 2009.[4] But most services included in the portal refer to government-to-business services (such as citizen’s identification verification and fiscal-related services). The business stakeholder interviewed by the IRM researcher (Microsoft) agreed that the potential of the commitment is minor, given the absence of metrics on citizen’s use of the portal. This absence constitutes a key missing element of the initiative.

Completion

The commitment has seen limited completion.

Milestones 10.1 and 10.2 have been implemented. The platform for the inventory and the methodology (milestone 10.1) are available online.[5] This same website defines the expected scope of the content (milestone 10.2).[6] The research methodology mostly focuses on e-government services. The methodology seeks to discover the key characteristics of service delivery, the resources and services available, the level of service digitalization, and the public’s use of services.

The research and analysis of required functionalities (milestone 10.3) is underway. The deadline to finish the research, December 2017, falls outside of this report’s evaluation period. The government will publish a detailed analysis of services available at the service portal, with the support of the government-run National School of Public Administration.[7] Services in the research will be ranked and evaluated on the quality of the tools available to the public.

Milestones 10.4-10.7 have not been started. During the monitoring sessions, government representatives stated that internal government activities have been initiated. However, due to the limited results so far, these activities have not been shared publicly. The commitment now has a new milestone: to deliver a public service database[8] from the same implementation agency.

The action plan outlined a delivery date of October 2017 for milestones 10.1-10.4. Thus, the commitment is behind schedule.

Early Results (if any)

The expected results of the commitment are wide reaching and include improvement of public services and more effective management of public resources. However, it is too early to analyze results, given the preliminary stage of the evaluations at the time of writing. The business stakeholder interviewed (Microsoft) suggested that inputs from civil society on commitment delivery have been limited. In addition, it is important to note that the main source of information for the public service evaluations is the government itself, not citizens. For example, the government serves as the main source of information for evaluating civic participation services.[9] At the same time, the commitment does include citizens in the development of the Portal’s language and format, as well as in the design of the evaluations. The government also noted that citizens will be able to file complaints on services.

Next Steps

In the future, to have solid results, the government needs to provide evidence of how the evaluation process was used to improve public services in the country. Another suggested next step includes the publication of the survey results in open data format. The platform should also link the information to other open datasets. All should be available for use by civil society, so organizations can analyze the quality of services. In this way, the government can collaborate with civil society to evaluate and improve public service delivery. These actions will also help integrate citizen surveys on the evaluation of public services, as opposed to having these mechanisms rely only on government-centric evaluations.

10. Assessment and Streamline of Public Services

Commitment Text:

Undertake inventory of Federal Executive Branch services and implement an assessment through mechanisms of satisfaction, prioritizing services.

The commitment aimed to Find ways of disseminating information about public policies and services, whilst developing and enhancing methods and evaluation tools, fostering a more effective social participation, with the intent of facing two big problems: i) disarticulation between government and civil society; ii) neediness of information by citizens.

More specifically, the commitment was set out to achieve the following milestones:

10.1 – Platform for inventory and methodology, with manual

10.2 – Content scope definition – arrange a meeting, in order to establish a research scope with the civil society about the evaluation content

10.3 – Conduct research and analysis functionality requirements for the implementation of evaluation mechanisms at the Service Portal

10.4 – Data inclusion by organizations at the Portal, in accordance with methodology/standards set

10.5 – Implementation – joint effort between the Ministry and the civil society, in order to develop Portal functionality and a library for open applications (this content needs to be discussed for the functionality)

10.6 – Diffusion - joint effort with the civil society for promoting diffusion actions

10.7 – Making user evaluation device and its outcomes available

Responsible institution: Ministry of Planning, Development, and Management

Supporting institutions: Ministry of Transparency, Oversight and Comptroller General of Brazil, Brazilian Telecommunications Agency (Anatel), Government Secretariat , Ministry of Justice and Citizenship, Brazilian Micro and Small Enterprises Support Service (SEBRAE), Brazilian Institute for Consumer Defense (Idec), MariaLab Hackerspace, Reclame Aqui, Proteste, Microsoft

Start Date: December 2016...                         End Date: November 2018

Commitment Aim:

This commitment aimed to improve public service delivery by increasing accessibility to review public services online and increasing citizens’ use of these tools. To achieve these goals, the government committed to develop an inventory of online services provided by the federal executive branch. In particular, the government would gather information on tools available for citizens to evaluate public service delivery. The government also committed to implementing changes to make it easier for citizens to provide feedback on the public service experience.

Status

Midterm: Limited

The commitment saw limited completion and was behind schedule. Milestones 10.1 and 10.2 were completed with the deployment of a platform for the inventory and methodologies involved in the commitment (10.1). The scope of the website content was also defined (10.2). Milestone 10.3 was underway; it involved research based on required functionalities for the platform. Milestones 10.4–10.7 had not been started.

End of term: Complete

All milestones have been completed.

Milestones 10.3–10.5 involved internal activities related to the release of the portal. The IRM researcher found no public evidence of delivery other than government officials’ statements. [71] Milestone 10.3 involved the research and analysis necessary for portal implementation. Milestone 10.4 involved adding datasets of public services and their agencies in the portal, and Milestone 10.5 involved implementing the portal.

The IRM researcher could not verify completion information directly. However, it is possible to infer that the stages were executed to some extent. The portal indicators note that 1,751 services are included for citizens’ access, [72] and the IRM researcher tested five of them. The information displayed is, as predicted, a summary of information related to each service, including estimated time of response and key contact entry points. There is also simplified access to report issues or requests related to each tool, a service provided by the executive branch ombudsperson system, e-OUV. 

Milestone 10.6 involved the promotion of the platform among users. The IRM researcher found evidence of a communication campaign inside government news venues. [73] The government mentions in the monitoring report that a minor campaign has been promoted on social media. Considering that the milestone, as described, does not define the size or reach of the planned campaign, the milestone is considered complete.

Milestone 10.7 involves making public the evaluations from users and creating a dedicated web page in the portal to display indicators of such use. [74] In the portal it is also possible to rank institutions according to satisfaction index and other variables, including the number of feedbacks from users (864) and the average response time (currently 59 days).

Did It Open Government?

Access to Information: Marginal

Civic Participation: Marginal

Public accountability: Marginal

The commitment aimed to improve public service by making it easier for citizens to provide online feedback on public service delivery. To achieve this goal, the government undertook an inventory of federal executive branch online services and centralized the channels for citizens to rank and evaluate public service delivery.

Regarding advances in access to information, information portrayed in the portal is better organized and centralized, leading to a marginal improvement in transparency.

Regarding advances in civic participation, the improvement is marginal but present. According to Joelson Vellozo (from the Ministry of Planning, Development, and Management, which is the main body responsible for the milestones’ completion), the ability of citizens to more easily evaluate government services and use better feedback services constitutes a major advance in public service delivery. However, the IRM researcher noted that only 864 user opinions had been received so far out of 1,751 services included in the portal. It was also noted that the feedback referred to only 24 percent of services analyzed. A more considerable impact, therefore, would require wider use of the civic participation tools available by citizens.

Carried Forward?

This commitment was not included in the fourth action plan. The main website associated with the commitment, servicos.gov.br, has nonetheless been constantly updated since its launch. Such updating indicates that the commitment might be carried on by the government without a direct link to the OGP agenda.