The nirvana of digital transformation in public management

This article is written by Marco Antonio Zanatta, founder and CEO of Aprova Digital.

• The problem: Understanding how to be or make a digital government.
• **Why it matters: **To develop smart and sustainable cities, reduce the entropy of processes, and free up human resources so public managers can carry out projects that are more important for governments and citizens.
• **The solution: **Ending the repetitive and operational work of the municipal employee's scope and adopting technologies that put some public services on autopilot. Value-added public management is undoubtedly among the most complex challenges for any Brazilian state or municipality. Brazil being a diverse and populous country, improving the efficiency of public administration demands a Herculean effort. Municipalities recognise the need to leave the paper age behind, but this change is still surrounded by numerous doubts and, dare I say it, taboos.

What is a paper-proof city hall?

After all, what is a paper-proof city hall? In practice, how can we be or put in place a digital government?

Deploying a web application in which any citizen can apply for a permit over the internet without leaving home and the city hall can subsequently respond to citizens' requests immediately online, is a good example of moving to digital processes. In addition to efficiency, convenience, and agility for citizens, technology also adds value to management.

By eliminating repetitive and operational work from the municipal employee's scope in order to focus on complex and relevant tasks to develop a smart and sustainable city, we reduce the entropy of the process and free up employees to untie other knots, which are much more important for governments and citizens.

In Florianópolis, for example, an application that for decades took months to be issued is now released instantly**. **An instant permit to construct single-family homes is just the beginning of a digital - and real - transformation of municipal public management in the metropolis of Santa Catarina.

With this digital evolution, employees can now work on new automations or improve services already delivered to citizens, as well as dedicate themselves to analysing projects with a greater potential impact on the city, such as shopping malls and condominiums, which bring a burden to the municipality for them to function sustainably.

Moving from the present to improved digitisation of services should be a future pursued by every public manager.

This is the greatest proof that there is no agile government without human expertise, in addition to a great political and technological effort. Technology, no doubt, has become a strong arm to accelerate the digitalisation of public services, increase transparency, and support decisions by the municipal management. But can you see the common denominator in this equation?

Putting the citizen at the heart of decisions

Technological innovations and solutions help us to live better, but the citizen is always at the centre of the development. This is the nirvana of a digital transformation. Solving inefficiencies in the public sector and making services more efficient is all to do with people.

A digital, smart and efficient city is effective when decisions and solutions are focused on people, whether they are employees or citizens.

In another example, Brazilian municipalities have reached the limit for payroll expenses, so investing in automation has become the only way out. Countless city halls have already turned to a digital solution. One of them is the Secretariat of Urban Development of Itajaí (SC), where previously half a dozen servers, every day, worked exclusively to gather documents and review processes before sending them to analysts.

Since the city hall decided to put this flow on autopilot, the potential of these six servers has switched to more relevant tasks, while a system does the rest, automatically, without fail or the need to print even one sheet of paper.

A city hall that decides to automate its processes - following the Itajaí model - can perform this work four times faster, involving fewer and fewer employees.

Despite the bureaucratic restrictions on investing in innovation, GovTechs - startups that develop solutions for government** **- are there to prove that the future is already present in many city halls. Proof of this is Mogi das Cruzes (SP), where the population has 42 types of digital requirements, which has led to a reduction of more than 70% in the approval time for construction projects.

In a little more than two weeks, the person responsible for a building project has their permit in hand, instead of waiting more than two months, as was the case previously.

For some municipalities, migrating from paper to digital may be a thing of the past. For others, moving to a digital future is what is being experienced now, and to talk about paper-proof public services is still something absurdly innovative.

However, moving from the present to improved digitisation of services should be a future pursued by every public manager.

Each city lives in a phase of digital maturity and being able to provide answers for each one of them, building bridges for the inclusion of all people, is the mission of those who are actively involved, as I am, in the digital transformation of public management.

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(Image Credit: Envato Elements)