01 - Instrumento de Políticas Públicas

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And I get the attention, the answer you give, Daniel, when you say that one of the great risks of making the linkers is that then comps become very conservative. It is my interpretation. It is curious to see that answer, honestly, because if you do an entire diagnostic exercise about the needs and the problems that the comp is looking to answer and solve, then in the end the alternatives and the action strategies that are typically proposed, it is not so much in function to be able to answer those questions, but to what extent can we commit to doing it? And then one is definitely asked, then the majority, there is no such relationship, that logic of connection between the diagnosis and the solution, or if they are not, I repeat, it is very likely that we are talking about more sophisticated speeches, the comps as more sophisticated speeches, which in the end is what is going to end up implementing, it is only what can be implemented, but not necessarily what responds to the characteristics of the public problems, then I do not know, I was listening to the reaction quickly and I thought it was a good question, but no, I think that one can do the tree of problems, the diagnosis, the central problem, identify its causes, etc., and then there is a portfolio of possible solutions, one can have, there is no one-to-one map between the tree of problems and the tree of solutions, and the tree of solutions is where I think it can be more or less ambitious, one can have a solution that does respond to the problem, but that reaches to a certain point, let's say, then it advances in the right direction, but it could go further, then I do not know, an example may be if the ministry x has to design and implement a program for x things that solves that problem, that could be the complete action, one could leave it a little incomplete, let's say, saying the ministry has to design the program, that is to fulfill the action of the solution, and then the implementation discussion begins, I think there is no inconsistency, let's say, but if the part of the action consultation is one of the hardest parts of the compis construction, because when one compromises the ministries to do things and give them degrees of freedom, right? It is a virtue, we do it for that, right? One wants precisely to give degrees of freedom to the ministries, to the entities, so that they all work on some purposes and on some programs, some policies that require precisely the articulation and coordination, so it is a virtue, but it is expensive for the minister to do it, right? In the short term and in the logic of the political cycle, the minister often wants them to leave it in peace, that they leave it to do their own things, and the dilemma would be if we promise a lot and fulfill little, or we promise little and we fulfill everything, a little from the vision, from the degree of linkedness of the compis. In addition, I think that there is a complex issue, not only in concerting the action, but in the narrative that the compis document will have, because not all actors have the same perception, I don't know, if there is a government that has a vision and there is an entity, the judicial branch that, for example, has the issue of criminal politics, there are different visions of how the criminal politics was built and what is the narrative that, according to the government document, is going to be tested. And that is like an interesting info. Now, there is also another point that I think is important that we highlight, I don't think that the politicians, I mean, I don't think that, as we have already said, not all compis are public politicians, but not all public politicians are compis. For example, at the regional level, at the department level, at the local level, the alcads have public policies, the governors have public policies, and they don't have because they necessarily are inspired by some central level compis. But many have been copied from the model, from the model, like Bogotá, right, who has some distrital compis. And Bogotá has a theme that seems problematic to me and that I think Daniel differentiated it well and I like that when he says my bet, when I was in planning, it was to make sure that compis implied intersectionality, but that if, for example, the education sector, the health sector, the justice sector, if you want to get a policy, it does not necessarily have to take the compis, the model of Bogotá has that very problematic sense, because they created a compis, they gave me an agreement from the district council and all the politicians who plan the different secretaries have to go to document compis, regardless of their intersectionality. And that is complicated, because they even took away the autonomy from secretaries to do their own policies, that is, then the document, a guide that they have, and right now I want to go a little further, and the compis has the possibility of even trying to reject a policy at a certain time, and that is problematic. Now, how is it being solved in other territorial areas? A little complicated too, at great risk. The technical secretaries present a technical document with a basic diagnosis, with a number, with some objectives, some principles, and they go to the municipal council to return the agreement or to the departmental assembly to return the ordinance, with the purpose of doing it legally binding. And that is a very complex mechanism, because of course one understands what they want to do, hey, if a new government arrives and at a territorial level, the political fracture is much higher, if the possibility of returning the political consensus, institutional consensus is more difficult, then they say we are going to return it, I agree, and we are going to make sure, for example, even mechanisms, the policies of aging at the municipal level, approve within the political framework, the famous stampede of the adult mayor, to secure resources from there in the future, yes, and that is what they are doing. How do they see it from the planning, how do they see it from the national, that translation or interpretation of what to do with public policies, some with compis and others in other formats at a territorial level? Yes, okay, I have not reflected so much on this topic, to be absolutely frank, I am learning from many things, I think it is very interesting, I met Bogotá very well, I thought it was beautiful, because they thought about structuring the processes, that seems valuable to me, it seems interesting to me the point of taking the compis to be in arrangements or agreements of the council, what happens at the national level, I think it is that I have always seen the law as an instrument of implementation of a policy, then that has been done, the case of compis entrepreneurship is an example, then the compis was built and the law came out as an instrument of implementation of that policy, but it was not that the law was implemented so that the compis has to have a law, the law was an instrument that could be one more implementation, so that's how I would see it and that's how I would see it, that at a sub-national level it should also work, when you take it to the council or to the assembly so that they can prove to you some instrument of implementation of that policy that does not have to be all the policy, it can be a part, right? So that would be like the right role and the right use of the different instruments as I would see it. If we want to move on to another political instrument to continue moving forward in the discussion with one that is very important today and is the national development plan. The president of Petro has already arrived with his government plan that has to transform it into a development plan with the procedure that the organic law defines, the national development plan and the new director, professor of this university, among others, and there he says we are going to make a development plan of 100 pages and 15 indicators. As you can see this proposal that among others had also retaken it in development, he had proposed it a couple of years ago, small development plan, concise, punctual and that we do not have a narrative or indicators where all the entities put what they want to see in that proposal. Diego, but this, let's say, this discussion that is conjuntural is also marked in a theoretical discussion, and it is that as we started a little bit, the government for policies or the government for development plans, to say it in some way, Daniel knows it well and we have looked at it, not all countries, for example, Latin America have the development plan document, I understand Mexico, Colombia, Ecuador, but for example, the United States does not have a equivalent figure in the development plan, not all of us have it even constitutionalized and when you look at the narrative of the article of the development plan, the 339 does not talk about politics, but strategic political orientations, and there I return to the subject that politics in Colombia is like a format, as institutional format. I call it different methods, they are different approaches to what to do with the public, finally, well done via Compass, well done via departmental agreements, municipal agreements, plans of development with 15 pages, 30 points, etc. All of these are tools that, in the last, for me, I insist, are speeches, all of this, if it is translated effectively into projects, with investment and with results, we do not talk about public policies, we talk, it is a rhetoric, many alcaldes present their public policy, a document and they call it public policy, all of that is, and one says where, but where is all this, where, materially speaking, specifically speaking, where that is reflected, how many resources are aimed for this, who are going to implement it, when are they going to implement it, there are a large number of these that I do not criticize in the sense that they are good intentions and good speeches, one more elaborated, more sophisticated than others, with methods supremely advanced, of greater or less participation, a strategic plan can be one of these instruments, I remember them until law, I mean, definitely for me, I am, in that case, quite insistent on this vision. Gerwig, who was the Canadian economist, who contributed a lot to the development of the plans of development, in fact, he participated in the four strategies of Misael Pastrana, he said in the year 74 that Comillas would be desirable until it is possible and legal to replace the words plans and planning by policies and strategies, he saw it in 74 that if there are two paradigms, let's say, of governmental intervention, one, I would call it that, of short term, of four years thought in the goals of government, very focused on the execution of public investment resources, while the vision of politics, a vision of articulation of actors, of governments, of strategies, of instruments, I do think there are paradigms. Reaction and reaction, no, this is super interesting, then the plan of development has three parts, right? It has the basis, which I think is the narrative, it has the articulated, it goes to the law, not to the Congress, it comes out a law of the plan and has the plurian plan of investments, right? But I also agree with Gonzalo in the sense that I think it is an instrument of that formulation of policies and I think that if it achieves, what is the role of the plan? And there was development, the study was done a couple of years ago and based on that study, in fact, the DNP did a job interviewing many directors, ex-ministers, ex-directors, ex-subdirectors, technical directors, it is a very beautiful job, I hope they publish it soon, if it is not published, to make a diagnosis to improve the process of construction of the plan, so I think that ... They were going to get it by compass, I think. I do not know if ... Yes, they were going to get it by compass and I think that they finally did not get it. But it would be nice that they get it out, or at least they publish what they already have, because basically what they wanted to do was achieve, what the diagnosis was a little, that the plan had become a Frankenstein, a little unmanageable, originally the plan was approved by the compass, it was not going to the Congress, right? Before the Constitution of 1991, the plans were going to the compass and the chapters were still being approved, so the national development plan, education theme, was going and a compass came out, right? So the compass was really the instrument of implementation of the vision of the plan, right? Now it goes to Congress, it has to go to previous consultations, it is a much more ... It has to go to the national planning council, it is a much more participative, which is also very in line with the vision of public policy formulation of this government, which I think is super interesting and is going to be nice to see. It is not contrary to what I have told you once, that is, it is not the first time in history that it is going to be participative, the plan has already been done participatively, we are going to see if they go deeper into that and in what sense they go deeper into that vision, which I think is very good, but I think that since 1991, because there is that vision that public policy formulation has to be an exercise from below to above, it is not a purely technocratic exercise, let's say experts, right? But the plan, as I see it, I think it is mainly a way to put the entire government in front, to think about where they want to go in four years, to communicate that vision to the country, to build it with the country, right? With the private sector and it is also important in the sense that it marks the field to the ministers, to the entities, so that they do not have to answer you only to confessions and that was super useful in the pandemic, in fact, having a plan kept the focus, so yes, it has to correspond to things, to deepen, to accelerate, to prioritize suddenly, but that helps to be less discretionary to the policy, I believe a lot in the value of the rules, and avoid discretionaryness in public policy, in the current act of the government, because the government has power and the power without limits seems dangerous to me, so I like all these instruments that mark the field, right? Two things, in the companies processes that are so strong or not the citizen participation, that is, because it seems to me that that does not stop with putting the compass on the web page and that one sends, depends on the context, how is the theme of the participation? Yes, excellent, then I think that has been very deepened and yes, the truth when I say technical secretary of the compass, I think that was one of the points that I emphatized a lot, the minimum was to publish the compass for comments and that everyone could comment and publish it enough time and not simply circulate the compass between friends, because they did not comment that it was happening previously with some compasses, right? And when I arrived, we said to some seniors, I demand that all the compasses be published, but I agree with Jorge Iván's professor, that is not enough and really, and I think that if we advance a lot in construction of compasses participatively, the compass of reactivation in the middle of the pandemic, more than 25 virtual sessions with 500 participants, a number of instances that participated in the construction of that compass, the compass of protection of leaders, it was also built from this territory with leaders, leaders, organizations of civil society, that compass, Rodrigo Primi and another person, they criticized him a lot, but for other reasons, but I think it is a very nice compass, but I think that the compass is being directed in that direction, right? In that it is built every time with more participation and that is very important to make sure that these facts are linked, and those are the leaders, as long as they participate, there is a lot of participation, there are leaders, so those leaders are going to demand that it really is public policy in the sense that it is implemented, in the sense that they have to transcend government periods. I imagine that there is enough clarity, there is awareness that many people feel that these are, as they say in the DNP that I criticize a lot of socialization, exercise of socialization of the compass, which basically is almost that it is not sufficiently open or willing to transformations or changes of the same text or of the same vision, the fact that it is participative and that they go and attend and travel the country and consult the question that is always asked, and that is what I constantly hear, is that there is no necessarily a real disposition to change anything, they are exercise of socialization more than co-construction, that is a fairly broad perception, I do not know what you think. Well, at least when I am there we try to change that, the intention at least was that it was not only socialization, which was what was happening before, but that it really was co-construction and there we work a lot with the public innovation team of the DNP, which is a very nice team that has just been designed as methodologies and instruments so that it really was participative and it was simply a technical director of the DNP presenting an hour and well, send us comments and reactions if you want and then I think that it has not been like that and institutional capabilities have also been built to have much more participative processes, I give another example, the SINAPEL compass of the national area protected system, which is a very nice environmental compass, it was also built with a process financed by the PENUD, it seems to me by some multilateral organization with construction of these organizations and communities of base, it was very down to the top, the truth, so every time I think that there is a realization and a awareness that we cannot continue to do politics as you say, locked up in the 26.13 and then simply socialize it. In a question we are already closing very punctual, would it be justified? I think that if a reform of the law 152/94, the organic law of planning for a specific chapter on public policies, how did I see it? How did I see that issue of reforming the law? I would have to think a little more, I would no longer want to compromise with whether the law is needed, but I would pass that question to the new director of planning, this is a nice topic for the professor Jorge Iván González to get on with the team to think, what is the next step in the paradigm of public policy formulation and I think that the DNP is the right one to lead precisely that reflection, so yes, it seems to me that we will talk about that discussion. If we want to close with our section number two and it is a section of suggestions of public policies or related to public policies, what recommendations could we give our audience? It can be books, not necessarily new, but books that at some point you liked and changed the way of seeing and understanding public policies. Among other things Daniel, a topic that has been asked a lot that I would also like to talk about or recommendations on liberalism and public policy. How do we reconcile that vision? Very good, yes, so in fact there are several books of public policies from a liberal classic vision that I find interesting there, so there is one recently written by Pete Betteke from George Mason, who wrote a recent text last year, I think it is called Public Policy and Governance under a liberal-classic perspective. There is another one called Robust Political Economy by Mark Pennington. The focus in those texts is a lot on how we do, it is a vision of the power that one gives to the state to do things, and how we limit and rationalize that power so that it is consistent with individual freedoms and autonomy. But a lot in that line too, and perhaps a book, the book that I would recommend would be the Titerania of the Experts, by William Easterly, who has precisely that vision, that we have to transit from a paradigm where experts formulate politics and impose it on a population towards a formulation where the citizen is in the center of the formulation of politics and has to agree with the policy and with the vision he has about his own life and about his future, right? The list can be long, the truth. There are very, let's say, books that I would recommend to understand both the process of public policies and the role of knowledge in public policies, a little from the perspective of last word, where in terms of the process of public policies, I would recommend books such as the Sabatier, such as the Jane Kingston Smith, Van Gauner and Jones, and one can also distinguish between rational visions versus discursive or constructivist visions. In the first one, rational visions like Weiner and Weining, and within the constructivists, there are Frank Fisher and his books about the argumentative turn, that you mentioned, and I would recommend, by the way, the translation of the book "La Paradoja de las Políticas Públicas y el arte de la toma de decisiones políticas", which is already achieved by platforms, for example. And I am ready. Also, let's say, that they have been transformers, let's say, in the understanding of public policies, Parsons, Anderson. Well, they go like eight, nine already. Yes, a list of readings. And in Spanish, in Colombia, obviously, they have… The new version, what is it going to come out soon? We expected it to come out, we were looking to see, in fact, on purpose, I take the opportunity to do a cuña. On November 3rd, we have here at the university, we call it "Public Policy and Public Management debates", in which we are setting up some discussion tables about different topics, about public policy and public management, quite interesting. We have some of those special guests, I don't want to, right now, give names, because we are about to confirm, but they are of a very high level. Well, taking back books, Guy Peters, clearly… The classroom program. One of the ones I recommend. Ah, I was saying… I recommend one of Guy Peters, the zombie ideas, which I think is a very interesting book, where he discusses why public policy ideas are maintained. The bad ones. The bad ones. Public policies persist and are supported. Even though they are bad, they are bought, but they are maintained. For another session, it is worth it that they organize a discussion. With Guy Peters personally, clearly, yes. And recently, I have understood, a book came out, I have not read it, but I was looking at the table of content from Eafit, I think it is Slava, and about… And Andrés Olaya, yes, about a model of analysis and formulation of public policies inspired by the government of Medellín. Ah, yes. Exactly. So, what is there is material, fortunately, I think… The book of Pablo Sanabria, I would also recommend it, that it was last year's public policy. In Colombia, it was applied… Yes, the books of Juan Juan Cuervo already have several books and edited in the dictionary of public policies. That is, fortunately, every time we have in Spanish, that was a great problem. That was a great problem. We had ten years ago when we started this, almost all the texts that one had to recommend were the four classics of Aguilar, which saved them from one of the problems… El derrot. El derrot, del desalazar… Y para de contrar. Y para de contrar. Ahora ya encuentra uno una buena… el de Jairo Santander y Jairo Melo, es muy importante la introducción de las políticas públicas. Bueno. Y tú sacaste hace poco también un libro. No, estamos a punto de sacar uno que se llama Actores Institucionales y Políticas Públicas. Pero sacaste uno que era sobre el derecho y sentencia de la Corte Constitucional y Políticas Públicas. Exacto. Y su incidencia en las políticas públicas, claro que eso contribuye a la debate. Damos por cerrado hoy nuestro primer podcast, agradeciendo de nuevo la presencia de Daniel Gómez, de Gonzalo, nuestro de Cano, y pues aquí abastaremos Diego y yo acompañándolas en otros podcasts, en otros temas de interés para el análisis del gobierno y de las políticas públicas. Muchas gracias. Gracias, Daniel. Gracias, de Cano. Muchas gracias a ustedes. Gobierno y Políticas Públicas. Un espacio de la Facultad de Finances, Gobierno y Relaciones Internacionales de la Universidad Externa de Colombia. Un podcast donde tendremos como invitados a actores institucionales, políticos y académicos, para conversar sobre todo lo relacionado con la acción gubernamental y las políticas públicas.