In a country with 27 state governments, more than 5,000 city halls, and around 12 million people working in the public sector, calls to reform — or improve — Brazil’s civil service never really seem to go away.
But the left-wing government of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva isn’t particularly fond of the word “reform,” with the term long being associated with proposals to reduce the size of the state. While supporters of those initiatives argued they would boost efficiency, critics warned they would lead to precarious public services.
Because of this, the current government prefers the word “transformation,” and has even created a department for state transformation within the Management and Innovation Ministry, which has been rolling out a series of measures to reorganize federal civil servant professions, streamline hiring and promotion processes, and take public services digital.
And they are working on a bill for a New Public Management Law — although it's not certain when the solicitor general’s office will be able to review it. The current department head, Jorge Messias, is busy managing his nomination to the Supreme Court, and next year, Congress will be focused on the elections.
Branches of the public sector linked to areas such as culture and the environment have also undergone extensive rebuilding, after the previous far-right administration openly worked to dismantle them.
However, there is one glaring issue with Brazil’s civil service that remains unresolved, largely thanks to intense lobbying, and that is the huge perks and benefits enjoyed by a handful of public sector professions, especially when contrasted with the low pay of so many other civil servants in crucial fields like health and education.
The share of Brazil’s workforce that is employed in the public sector is actually much smaller than the average of OECD nations. Still, the distortions within the civil service help fuel the common perception in Brazilian society that the country’s public administration as a whole is a major driver of inequality.
The prime example of this concerns judges and prosecutors, who are entitled to an additional 60 days of vacation per year on top of the judiciary’s year-end recess. And if the days off aren’t used, a part of them can be converted into cash. And that benefit comes on top of salaries that — by making use of legal loopholes — often far exceed constitutional limits, popularly known as “supersalaries.”
These and other distortions are being targeted by three bills, including a proposed amendment to the Constitution, recently presented by members of Congress, coordinated by Congressman Pedro Paulo of the Social Democratic Party.
The Lula administration, however, has taken issue with parts of the proposals. In its view, they ignore particularities of each profession and have not been subject to sufficient debate. Management and Innovation Minister Esther Dweck has stated that more targeted regulations — through ministry-level ordinances and voluntary adherence plans for states — may be more effective than debating sweeping constitutional changes.
This week, to better understand these different views on what needs to change in Brazil’s public administration, our guest is Francisco Gaetani, Brazil’s Special Secretary for State Transformation at the Management and Innovation Ministry.
Gaetani is a public administration professor at the Getulio Vargas Foundation and other schools, and has held decision-making positions in the United Nations Development Program in Brazil, the Planning and Environment Ministries under previous administrations, as well as in companies such as mining firm Vale and Banco do Brasil.
In this conversation, he unpacks:
The main characteristics of Brazil’s civil service
What needs to change, and how, in the ministry’s view
The matters his department has been addressing
The issues they see in the proposals coming from the House
