Department of Effective Public Management
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Presentation

Mar�a Fernanda Trigo The "Inter-American Award for Innovation in Effective Public Management" is an activity of the Department for Effective Public Management that seeks to enhance public management innovations, systematize, encourage and promote them as useful experiences and possible to replicate elsewhere. This effort seeks to help public institutions of the Americas being more transparent, effective and citizen-oriented.

The First and Second Editions of the Inter-American Award saw a noteworthy participation of 55 and 74 public institutions from 13 and 18 OAS Member States, respectively. The evaluation process is carried out by a Panel composed by the OAS Secretary for Political Affairs and renowned members in the subject from distinguished universities and educational institutions � recognized in the region.

The winner institutions of the First and Second Editions of the Inter-American Award were awarded during a Special Ceremony held in the framework of the II and III Inter-American Conferences on Innovative Experiences in Effective Public Management, which took place in Panama City (March, 2013) and city of Pachuca de Soto � Mexico (March, 2014), respectively. In these events, representatives from the winner institutions had the opportunity to share their experiences with authorities, academics and experts in public management from all OAS Member States. These institutions also won an internship provided by the Basque Government, for the winner institutions of the First Edition, and the Republic Popular of China, for the winner institutions of the Second Edition.

Furthermore, all selected and winning experiences are available on a "Bank of Innovative Experiences for Effective Public Management" that can be accessed from our website, open to public officers, academics and interested public who may know first hand the innovative efforts that public institutions of the Americas make every day in order to provide better public services and fulfill their mandates and objectives for the benefit of citizens that all public servants should.

Finally, it is important to reiterate the invitation to all public administrations of OAS Member States to participate in this call, with the understanding that their efforts will be known and appreciated by the community of public officers of the Americas and will strengthen the bonds of cooperation among our fellow nations and democratic governance in the region as a whole.

Sincerely,
Mar�a Fernanda Trigo
Director of the Department for Effective Public Management of the OAS

General Information
Objectives

The main objective of the "Inter-American Award for Innovation in Effective Public Management" is to strengthen democratic governance in the region through the improvement of public administrations in the American countries, through the dissemination and exchange of innovative experiences in effective public management.

Its specific objectives:

To recognize, identify, collect and disseminate innovative practices in public management of the countries that integrate
the Inter-American System.

To draw attention to innovation as a cross cutting issue of public management that goes beyond the use of technology.

To keep a "data" of innovative practices in effective public management that can be consulted by public officials,
experts and citizens in general.

To generate among the public a growing demand for the improvement of public management in their public administrations.

To stimulate innovation in public management among the countries of the Americas.

Categories

The Inter-American Award for Innovation in Effective Public Management has 5 categories related to different areas of public management:

Innovation in Planning and Evaluation of public policies bar

Planning:

  • It concerns to the set of initiatives and strategies carried out by the public administrations to organize prospectively their different resources (economical, administrative, human, amongst others) in order to achieve their institutional objectives in line with the governmental action.

Evaluation:

  • It refers to the set of initiatives and strategies carried out by the public administrations, which allow the performance verification of the public policies. These initiatives and strategies can be used in different dimensions, such as the Process Evaluation (compliance of processes and procedures that affect the management performance), the Programmatic evaluation (of performance goals or expected outcomes) or the Impact Evaluation (about the fulfillment of expected results based on certain objectives).

  • In that regard, evaluation contributes to the identification and resolution of problems and the formulation of new policies or restatement of those not fulfilling the objectives for which they were created.

Innovation in Human Resources Management bar

  • It comprises a set of initiatives and strategies carried out by the public administrations, which is intended to ensure a proper management of human resources in the context of a professionalized civil service. These processes are defined by a set of systematic actions through which public servants may enter, remain and develop within the public service, safeguarding basic principles such as equality, merit and neutrality in the exercise of their functions.

Innovation in Quality of Public Policies bar

  • It�s defined as the set of initiatives and strategies carried out by the public administrations, which is intended to achieve and to ensure that public services contain previously established specifications that meet the requirements and needs of users. It relates to issues such as accessibility, information, time, customer service, safety, comfort, environmental impact, and service offered. These specifications are defined in terms of the quality level expected by customers, the external and internal pressures, the budgetary constraints and techniques, and the behavior of competition, among others.

Innovation in Open Government and Access to Public Information (participation, collaboration and transparency in public management) bar

Elements to take into consideration:

Transparency:

  • It�s comprises to a set of initiatives and strategies carried out by the public administrations, which is intended to put at the disposal of citizens all the useful information about the responsibilities, actions, decisions, data, plans, sources, amongst other, regarding to public administrations and who their members are.

Collaboration:

  • It�s refers to the set of initiatives and strategies carried out by the public administrations, which is intended to engage, involve and convene all the citizens and social agents for co-creation of a legitimate public value and the contribution to resolving problems of general interest, collective problems, taking advantage of the society�s different sectors and actors.

Participation:

  • It�s concerns to the set of initiatives and strategies carried out by the public administrations, which intended to engage the citizens� right to be involved, actively, in the decision-making process; to promote the interaction between the Government and Civil Society so that they both can mutually benefit from their knowledge, ideas, and experiences in order to improve of the public action�s quality and effectiveness.

    The flow of information - from the Government towards the citizens, civil society organizations and private sector; and the feedback from them towards the Government � is key for the good functioning of an Open Government.

Innovation for Institutional Coordination (inter-institutional, intra-institutional, trans-institutional, with civil society, and private sector, amongst other.) bar

It comprises a set of initiatives and strategies carried out by the public administrations, which is intended to ensure the coherence and coordination between the various internal and external actors involved in accordance general public policy. In that regard, the coordination could imply:

  • Inter-institutional Coordination: It seeks an effective coordination between the different public sector institutions and dependencies.

  • Intra-Institutional Coordination: It seeks an effective coordination inside the public sector institutions and dependencies, inside the specialized and autonomous national agencies (High Administration, Management, Technical levels)

  • Coordination with Civil Society and the Private Sector: It seeks an effective coordination between a national entity/institution/agency and civil society organizations (NGOs, labor unions, professional associations, chambers of commerce, community and student groups, amongst others) or private business sector through the different modalities.

  • Trans-Institutional Constitutional: It seeks an effective coordination in accordance with a national public policy with involved actors from different institutional nature.



Criteria

The criteria to be evaluated by the Special Jury are:

a. Originality

  • Creation of original processes within the public administration based on knowledge and experience. This approach seeks to stimulate the creativity of public managers in solving everyday problems related to the work state.

b. Citizen Impact

  • Seeks to demonstrate that innovation brings a greater benefit to citizens. For example, shorter waiting times, clear information, simplified processes, etc.

c. Replicability

    It refers to the ability to replicate the innovative practice in other countries of the Americas. To that end, the possibility of adapting administrative processes to other institutional contexts, the availability of funding and the political and social constraints should be valued.

d. Effectiveness

  • It refers to the ability to measure/achieve expected results through innovative experience, according to the objectives that have been proposed in a particular public policy (broadly defined as a program, activity, process, etc.).

e. Efficiency

  • It refers to the ability of government to manage their processes so that they can optimize their resources (financial, human, logistic, etc.) and in turn generate more and better results.

f. Complexity of the problem it solves

  • It refers to the complexity of the problem and the solution that can be presented from the public administration. In that sense, experiences that have to do with the central management of public administration, are more valued since they involve larger population, and the problem management is applied to multiple levels of government and associations, etc.

g. Sustainability if the experience

  • It implies the level of "rooting" of the experience that makes it able to stay in time, to resist political changes of government, institutional and organizational changes, lack of funding, lack of commitment of the authorities and government officials, etc.

h. Gender Perspective

  • It considers how the initiative impact differentially men and women and how public administrations have succeeded in adapting their internal processes in planning, implementation, evaluation and monitoring in order to meet this situation.


Awards

The awards are:

  • Inter-American Award for Innovation in Effective Public Management in Special Ceremony.

  • Publication of effective public management innovations in a SPA special newsletter.

  • Invitation to participate and deliver a speech at the III International Seminar �Innovative experiences in Effective Public Management�, to be realized in an OAS country.

The OAS Department for Effective Public Management reserves the right to disseminate the results of the selection process. Also, the application must consent authorization to broadcast and use, in whole or in part, the contents of it and of the innovative experience described.



Calendar

Begining of the call

May 1, 2015

Final date for submission of applications

June 30, 2015

Publication of the results

August 2015

Award Ceremony

TBD

* These dates are subject to change.


FAQs

What is an Innovative Experience?

  • An innovative experience in effective public management is a public policy (broadly defined as a program, activity, process, etc.) developed by a public administration that for its novelty or transformation, either in its design or execution, has produced outstanding results in its effectiveness and efficiency for the benefit of citizens.

For the purposes of this competition, the experience must have a minimum of two years of implementation.

Application Requirements to participate

To apply to the "Inter-American Award for Innovation in Effective Public Management" it is necessary to meet the following requirements:

  • Being a institution(s) or entity(ies) in any of the different administrative levels (national, state, local, etc.) and belong to one of the OAS Member States;

  • The innovative experience(s) to be presented, has to have a minimum of two (2) years of implementation;

  • To complete the On-line Application Form. Final date for submissions of applications is until June 30th, 2015 according the Calendar.

  • To send two printed copies of your Application form � by ordinary mail - to the Department for Effective Public Management through the Diplomatic channels (Ministries of Foreign Affairs) before July 30th, 2015. The printed copies of your Applications Form can be accompanied alongside annexes.

Note: Applications associated with a description or design of a draft law, law proposal, software, virtual platform or those related to a wide process of institutional reform, will be not taken into account.

Special Considerations

If an entity would like to apply for more than one category, it would need to use different nomination application form for each of them.

A national entity/agency/institution may present a maximum of three (3) innovative experiences in the same category, if it deems necessary.

All the information contained in the application form is considered true. If at any stage of the process it is proved that this requirement is not fulfilled; the application will be automatically disqualified. The decision can not be appealed.

How is the evaluation of applications?

Evaluation will be based on objective and technical criteria, impartially and independently verifiable.

First of all, the Department will make a preliminary selection to verify the compliance with the application requirements and will submit the selected experiences to a Special Jury.

Then, the Special Jury, composed of academic and political experts recognized for their expertise in public management, and based on pre-selected criteria and categories, shall determine and substantiate what practices are worthy of receiving recognition from the OAS. To that end, the Special Jury may require more information about the submitted application by phone, if it deems necessary.

In the absence of at least one application, the Jury may declare the category as void. It is also possible that the Jury declare a category as void if, though still having applications, they did not meet the selection criteria.

The decisions of the Special Jury will be taken in accordance with the specific characteristics in each category and established criteria in the General Information and the On-line Application Form. Likewise, its deliberations are confidential and final.

Only one experience will be awarded for each category and the decision is final in nature. Note: Applications associated with a description or design of a draft law, law proposal, software, virtual platform or those related to a wide process of institutional reform, will be not taken into acco.

If necessary, Jury Special will give �especial mentions� to those applications that have a special potential or component. These �especial mentions� only will be given to those applications which have not been selected as winner in their respective categories.

Who integrates the Evaluation Panel?

The Evaluation Panel is chaired by the Secretary for Political Affairs of the OAS and it is integrated by distinguished experts, academics and officials from institutions and internationally renowned universities.

At any time the Department for Effective Public Management (DEPM) will act as Technical Secretariat, in order to facilitate the activities.

Accompaniment

Department for Effective Public Management (DEPM) will provide accompaniment and assistance to the applicants interested in participating � submitting innovative experiences of their national institutions/entities/agencies -in the "Inter-American Award for Innovation in Effective Public Management". Accompanying and assistance comprise: Answering queries and requests for information about the requirements to participate, the application process, amongst other things related to this activity.



Applications Received
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