The selection process for state managers progress – economics

Brasilia – While the administrative reform proposal (which anticipates a reformulation of the state’s human resources) is taking slow steps in Congress, selecting managers for leadership positions and assessing the performance of civil servants is already a reality in some states. Some of these programs have already started showing good results.

This is what rates “Vamos!” , A nonpartisan initiative that brings together the Lemann Foundation, the Humanize Institute, and República.org, which has entered into a technical partnership to support regional governments in implementing policies to attract, select and evaluate leaders for management positions in the most important areas of public service delivery in the state.

The group has technical cooperation agreements with six state governments: Ceará, Minas Gerais, Pernambuco, Sergipe, São Paulo and Rio Grande do Sul. The project has already assisted 44 selective projects, with 14,224 candidates. With the pandemic, experience has also gained focus on selecting candidates for positions in the health field.

In Ciara, there were 1,444 applications for 16 health jobs, leading to processes with 90 candidates per vacancy (see report below). After the first wave of selection, the government launched a selection process for 258 vacancies in government health unions with more targets. Challenging and continuous improvement of people management practices.

The main point

For Weber Sutty, Director of the Lemann Foundation, performance management is fundamental, because it allows us to understand what a leadership position in government has to offer and what type of person is required for the position. Today, people in the public sector are chosen more and more through political relations – this is the reality that administrative reform wants to change.

“In Brazil, in general, nominations are on the ground, and I’m not even talking about secrecy, but about arbitrariness,” Soti assesses. The director notes that all departments that have been able to provide better service to the population have what is called a “senior management service”, with a fair process for attracting and selecting leadership positions and clarity on what they must provide, in addition to continuous monitoring of the outcome.

The “Come on!” It does technical cooperation to create processes to find the most suitable people and allow the government to choose the person most relevant to the positions. “This is what we position as the balance between merit and trust,” says Sooty. He notes that it is a matter of transferring capabilities and training government teams so that they can make this choice. According to him, this practice is inspired by the experience of the United Kingdom, Australia, the United States and Chile.

New laws

This is the model that parliamentarians want to incorporate into the administrative reform of the federal government, which is still in the first phase in Congress, in the Constitution and Justice Commission (CCJ). The proposal changes the rules for how to employ, upgrade, and launch servers. The reform puts an end to the stability of a portion of the new servers for the Federal Executive. The new rules do not cover active federal employees.

In Minas Gerais, in a similar program, 182 vacancies were filled, among the secretaries of ministries, advisors, directors of agencies, independent entities and institutions. The selection processes have registered 30,000 candidates and 21 vacancies are under completion. Today, mainly, health and education personnel are occupied by professional people.

According to the governor of Minas Gerais, Romeo Zima (Novo), the program worked with performance selection and management processes for the entire second and third levels of government. These are the positions that the political candidacy has always occupied historically. “The indicator might be there, but it has to fit the criteria we’re asking for,” says Zema, who has instilled choice in all regional health departments.