OECD Public Governance Reviews Brazil's Federal Court of Accounts Insight and Foresight for Better Governance (eBook)

Oecd (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2017 | 1. Auflage
100 Seiten
OECD Publishing (Verlag)
978-92-64-27924-7 (ISBN)

Infos

Brazil’s Federal Court of Accounts, the Tribunal de Contas da União (TCU), is seeking to go beyond its traditional oversight role and help improve policy formulation, implementation and evaluation. This report identifies ways TCU can achieve this by applying principles of good governance to areas such policy coherence, strategic and long-term budgeting, internal control and risk management, and monitoring and evaluation. It suggests concrete steps TCU can take to adapt its own strategies, approaches and audit programming to provide valuable insight and foresight to policy makers in the centre of government. In this way, it can help ensure that policies and programmes are forward looking and based on evidence.

---

Brazil's Federal Court of Accounts, the Tribunal de Contas da Unio (TCU), is seeking to go beyond its traditional oversight role and help improve policy formulation, implementation and evaluation. This report identifies ways TCU can achieve this by applying principles of good governance to areas such policy coherence, strategic and long-term budgeting, internal control and risk management, and monitoring and evaluation. It suggests concrete steps TCU can take to adapt its own strategies, approaches and audit programming to provide valuable insight and foresight to policy makers in the centre of government. In this way, it can help ensure that policies and programmes are forward looking and based on evidence.

Textauszug

Chapter 2. Auditing for greater policy coherence in Brazil

Government-wide policy coherence is the quality of having unified and consistent public policies and programmes. It requires an overarching view of the functioning of government, and often falls under the remit of central institutions. Supreme Audit Institutions too can leverage audits across public sector entities, sectors and programmes to deepen the understanding of policy coherence in government. At Brazil’s federal level, there are numerous entities with decision-making power but with little incentive or requirement to co-ordinate. A siloed approach does not work in an era marked by cross-cutting policy challenges, and intertwined commitments to sustainable development, that require co-ordinated action. This chapter explores how Brazil’s supreme audit institution, the Tribunal de Contas da União (TCU), can promote (i) strengthening of institutional mechanisms for coherence and (ii) an understanding of policy interactions and policy effects. It is informed by activities of other supreme audit institutions seeking to reduce waste and inefficiency across government that is borne by a lack of coherence.

2.1. Introduction

Government-wide policy coherence is the quality of having unified and consistent public policies and programmes. Establishing government-wide coherence relies on effective management of conflicting objectives and trade-offs, reducing waste and avoiding unnecessary redundancies in expenditure of public funds across and between levels of government. Policy coherence is critical for tackling “wicked problems,” which are policy issues that are dynamic, poorly structured, persistent and social in nature and highly intertwined with other social issues, such as climate change, immigration, poverty, nutrition, education, or homelessness (OECD, 2016a). An absence of coherence can limit the impact of intra-sectoral policies that are critical for citizens’ well-being, such as water, land use and education (OECD, 2016b; 2015b; TCU, 2015).

In Brazil, the size and complexity of the government and the existence of multiple actors with decision-making power at the federal level create challenges for maintaining policy coherence. Brazil would benefit from improved inter-ministerial co-ordination, with the Centre of Government (CoG) taking a leading role and providing necessary guidance for synergies between federal entities. Brazil could also benefit from a comprehensive mapping of policies and programmes and their interactions. Supreme audit institutions (SAIs) can play a key role in assessing the capacity and effectiveness of CoG institutions and the bodies responsible for co-ordinating individual policies or programmes.

Many SAIs have developed work streams that go beyond traditional oversight, and they have begun to assess interactions between policies and actions of multiple government entities (OECD, 2016b). In the United States, for instance, the Congress required the SAI to assess the fragmentation, overlap and duplication of policies and programmes related to high-level cross-cutting priorities of the federal government. Drawing from such practices and international principles, the OECD recommends that Brazil’s SAI, the Tribunal de Contas da União (TCU), strengthen its efforts to contribute to policy coherence by assessing institutional mechanisms that enable communication and co-ordination, as well as the policy interactions and effects that facilitate or hinder achievement of broader goals.

2.2. Overview: policy coherence at the federal level

Coherence has become increasingly important as governments respond to inter-connected challenges and advance national goals that involve multiple entities. Since 2008, more than half of OECD member countries increased the number of cross-governmental initiatives. Governments are establishing teams of experts meant to tackle particularly complex goals, such as climate change, that come in addition to inter-ministerial committees (OECD, 2014a). OECD member countries have established specific units to co-ordinate whole-of-government approaches in order to deliver services and results (OECD, 2014a).

There are three main obstacles to bringing greater coherence to Brazil’s policy making process highlighted here. The first is the nature of the decentralised policy-making environment, whereby policy implementation is carried out predominantly by its 26 diverse states and Federal District. With expectations for rapid implementation of policy reforms through the tiered Federal system, Brazil has relied heavily on testing of new approaches at the municipal level where delivery of services in rendered and where interaction with citizens occurs (Rio+ Centre, 2014). Successful programmes may then be rolled out horizontally (to other municipalities and states) and vertically (to the federal level). The inception and testing of ideas at the local level, and the range in capacity of service delivery across states and municipalities, makes it challenging to acquire a clear idea of the variety of programmes in Brazil, and their implications on one another (Rio+ Centre, 2014).

Secondly, the federal level works through its own brand of complexity that makes it challenging to bring coherence between policy initiatives. Political diversity in the Congress and in Ministries has a tendency to produce juxtaposing priorities across the national level. Thirdly, a high administrative burden may impact co-ordination across the government. The Index for Public Integrity (2016) rated Brazil’s administrative burden as the second worst in all 105 countries ranked1 . OECD work on regulatory policy shows that excessively burdensome controls can lead to a greater risk of circumvention of control processes, inefficiencies or unnecessary delays in delivering public services.2 Cutting “red tape” can improve productivity, and was increasingly sought following financial crises in the 2000’s (OECD, 2010). In Brazil, a high administrative burden is coupled with a shorter-term policy focus, denoted by the absence of long-term plans and goals in the Brazilian federal public administration, and existing siloes between ministries.

Governments may see mechanisms for policy coherence, and facilitating co-ordination, as time consuming or as an additional administrative burden. Yet, coherence is a worthwhile endeavour, particularly in times of fiscal consolidation and cutbacks, as it is a way of “doing more with less” and avoiding waste in expenditure. Coherence helps to ensure that duplication of entities’ efforts are justified according to the broader policy objectives. It helps to determine when redundancy can lead to cost savings. In many cases, seeking policy coherence requires only modifications to existing structures or processes.

Through their audit work, supreme audit institutions (SAIs) can support the achievement of international principles related to policy coherence (OECD, 2016c). For instance, some SAIs incorporate, as a focus of their audits, mechanisms for effective co-ordination or elements that aim to build the capacity of leaders to manage increasingly cross-cutting policy interventions (OECD, 2016c). Moreover, audits and evaluations that look across sectors and ministries, particularly those with shared goals, can help to improve governance and reduce redundant, incoherent or competing efforts, as described below (see recommendation 2.2.). SAIs can also carry out such assessments of governance functions, like internal control and risk management, in order to address challenges and solutions for systemic issues (see Chapter 4).

TCU’s focus on good governance in recent years includes the development of Frameworks that are relevant for assessing policy coherence. In particular, the introduction of the Framework for Evaluation of the Centre of Government (TCU, 2016a) should enable more systematic assessment of institutional mechanisms for policy coherence, as the criteria is mostly geared towards institutional mechanisms for communication and co-ordination. Most of TCU’s work that comments on communication and co-ordination in recent years has focused on the legal framework and the effectiveness and consistency in practice. Recommendations are made below as to how TCU can leverage this existing work that touches upon institutional mechanisms needed for coherence.

Like its SAI peers around the world, TCU has begun exploring mechanisms for assessing policy coherence by tapping in to its “bird’s eye view” of functioning across government. TCU’s 2011-2015 strategic plan (PET) ushered in a restructuring of “secretariats” (units), aimed to enhance co-ordination between units and to focus each unit on public governance (OECD, 2014b; 2013a). The 2013 restructuring grouped staff together by sectors to enable specialisation and communication around thematic topics. For instance, social policies are captured under one co-ordinated and specialised Secretariat (OECD, 2013a). The success of the reorganisation in giving auditors a more holistic view of governance and improving communication was disputed in discussions with a range of TCU staff across levels. Recommendations are made in Chapter 1 for TCU to further seek improvements in communication and co-ordination within TCU itself.

Between 2014 and 2016, TCU developed two key frameworks that provide criteria for the assessment of mechanisms that are critical to policy coherence. TCU’s Framework to Assess Governance in Public Policies (2014) provides potential audit questions to enable auditors to consider how...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 7.8.2017
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Politik / Verwaltung ► Staat / Verwaltung
• ISBN-10: 92-64-27924-5 / 9264279245
• ISBN-13: 978-92-64-27924-7 / 9789264279247