United Nations Public Service Awards Case Studies

The Office of the Comptroller General - CGU is the agency responsible for assisting directly and immediately to the President regarding subjects that, in the sphere of the executive branch and at federal level, are related to the defense of public property and increasing the transparency of management through internal control activities, public service ombudsman, government audit, correction, prevention and fighting corruption.

The challenge of ensuring the proper application of public funds, ethical behavior, legal and transparent and effort of managers in preventing and fighting corruption require the CGU to act, among other skills, monitoring and detecting possible fraud in connection with the use of federal money, idealizing solutions in order to prevent further occurrences.

It also notes the increasing demand of civil society for Federal Government’s capacity expansion to augment the efficiency of public administration, stopping damage to State property arising from mismanagement of resources. Supported by independent media, these demands require timely responses in order to prevent new cases and increase society's trust in the government.

Moreover, the Brazilian State has assumed obligations to the international community in order to make use of new weapons to combat old problems. Two main international conventions on this subject adopted by Brazil are expressed in correlating efficient control of public expenditure and prevention corruption through the use of appropriate technology to these tasks’ complexity

In this context, the activities carried out by state agencies of control, such as the CGU, are essential to combating and preventing corruption. Therefore, due to the impossibility of systematic and continuous presence of institutional bodies on all fronts, maximizing control of these bodies is of paramount importance.

However, effectively monitor the implementation of public expenditure and produce integrated management information that assists decision making by public managers are the main difficulties. Although the vast majority of public expenditure data are available for access by managers, the path to get them is often complicated, given its fragmentation into several computer systems, managed by different agencies and built in several existing technology platforms, from oldest to most modern, greatly hindering the continuous monitoring of cases by the Internal Control.

What is the initiative about? (the solution)
The solution brings two types of benefits for the Brazilian public administration: first, as a process of "continuous auditing", by means of periodic monitoring of public spending’s implementation, allowing the action of the Internal Control prior or immediately after transfer of higher risk degree resources, confirming a better public management; and the second, as a tool of production and distribution of management information to federal government agencies to support public administration and increase efficiency of public spending. As an example of its effectiveness, we cite the study of data from the Federal Government’s Procurement Portal - COMPRASNET, summing about R$ 232 billion (US$ 137 bi) in investment purchases or services from 1998 to 2009. From this study were applied statistics techniques and data analysis which, added to business knowledge of CGU auditors, identified in an automated way possible offenses in purchases made by the government. Twenty-two audit tracks were idealized and processed, where we emphasize, for example, cases of corporate bond among bidders in the same bidding process, which has been seen little more than forty-eight thousand occurrences in 2005-2009, involving an amount of approximately R$ 470 million (US$ 276 M) in contracts. From this total, in 8465 cases a company with suspects ties was the winner of the contest. The systemic and automatized monitoring of these situations enables better targeting of audit work of the CGU in identifying possible illicit acts committed by public servants and/or executives of private companies, since it allows detection with total details of those involved and the actions taken in each type of suspicious transaction, maximizing the hit-degree of the workforce. In the information management area, as an example, the development of dashboards for monitoring day use and airfare expenses recorded in the Federal Government’s Day Use and Airfare Control System – SCDP. sent periodically to the federal public administration, enables perfect implementation of these costs: the biggest beneficiaries, costs per travel segment, total expenditures by agency, expenses evolution etc.. The solution also allows evaluation of the efficiency in the execution of those costs because it provides comparisons between the cost of an agency and the other using ranking feature.

Who proposed the solution, who implemented it and who were the stakeholders?
In early 2007 the discussion began with the intention of seeking a solution to the growing demand for information of public spending on the part of civil society, especially through the Social Organizations - OS, but also of international organizations, due to expanding participation of the Brazilian government in international forums on the topic of Corruption Prevention and/or Public Transparency and as a result of the commitments made at these events and others with specific focus on the public area. The strategy defined was the creation of an intelligence community to generate higher added value information, aiming to meet both internal and external demands. The ODP was designed within the Strategic Intelligence Board, as a result of academic and professional training of members of the area in mid-2007 when it began with the proof of concept of the first subject studied – Federal Government’s Payment Card, credit cards used for expense payments by public agencies. Studies on the card spending showed the potential for joint use of tools of information technology, statistical analysis and team of specialists in auditing to identify points of vulnerability in these costs. In addition, the Directorate sought, through agreements with Brazilian universities, the academic and technical support to the institutional and scientific modeling of the new unit created, which instructed the formatting of the working processes inherent to the tactical and operational plan designed to the ODP, including with regard to regulatory aspects prevailing at the time.

Describe how and when the initiative was implemented by answering these questions
a. What were the strategies used to implement the initiative? In no more than 500 words, provide a summary of the main objectives and strategies of the initiative, how they were established and by whom.
The strategy adopted combined the use of technology, expertise and joint work. In order to advance the processes under the responsibility of the CGU, in December 2008 it was inaugurated the Public Spending Observatory - ODP, which is the fruition of a proposal for an innovative process of work, built on the pillars of human capacity, implementation of scientific methodology, supported by IT, for the production of information and knowledge to support and accelerate the managers in strategic decision making, through monitoring of public expenditures by using large volumes of data processing from various sources. The ODP consolidates information into a single database, invests in the analysis by the auditing processes with broad field of public expenditure, CGU exclusive, to transform them into high added value knowledge, contributing to better management of public resources. Besides enabling the data crossing and analysis and thorough understanding of the budgetary execution of the Federal Government, this initiative allows the Administration to have better inputs to respond to questions presented by the society and the media about public spending. That is, the ODP has been enabling the transparency improvement and access to public information, as it enables the Administration to provide to the society, in a fast and complete, all different kinds of information, whether specific or complex, related to the implementation of Brazilian budget, strengthening the exercise of social control. The ODP is, hence, an indispensable tool in the process of preventing and combating corruption when enhances the access to aggregated information as well as the deepening of transparency, improves the management of public resources, improves and strengthens the activities research, investigation and prosecution of possible offenses in the federal executive branch. Involving the use of advanced IT tools for processing and analysis of information with the joint participation of several areas of the CGU, the ODP can merge their particular skills, creating a cognitive ecology, aiming to maximize the results of work performed and awake the human capital innovations. With the information generated by the ODP, government officials now have greater visibility on important information that will assist them in better monitoring of public resources usage, resulting in improved management and control, inasmuch as it allows the systematic understanding of government information by identifying which areas are most vulnerable. The target audience of the ODP are managers, CGU auditors and other public officials such as executive secretaries and directors under the Federal Executive Power. Among these, it focuses especially on those working directly in any step of a public funds investment’ process, who need general views with the possibility of deepening decision-making about public policy under its management.

b. What were the key development and implementation steps and the chronology? No more than 500 words
Initially we conducted case studies and proof of concepts for software that could meet the project objectives. Based on these studies, we chose a Business intelligence - BI solution consisting of: a Database Management System – DBMS; on-line analytical process - OLAP and statistical processing tools which allows applications of data and text mining algorithms. It also integrates the project a set of investigative analysis solutions: social network diagram, standard procedure identification and visual information analysis and, at last, a modeling software and information storage. The choice of this solution required the purchase of new equipment hardware, composed of different servers - both physical and virtual, for application processing and data storage. The data were structured in the OLAP tool, allowing the preparation of management reports and analytical monitoring, used for decision-making of CGU senior management and the planning and execution of audits and inspections. The idealized solution is meant to prevent the recurrence of events and inadequate procedures, search and inhibit damage to the public coffers, by building a system that alerts previously new attempts of offenses, already known and parameterized. Alongside the construction of the IT environment, CGU launched a public entrance examination process to hire public servants – Finance and Control Analyst job title - with at least a bachelor’s degree, to be employed in the various units of the agency. Among those hired, the board responsible for the ODP performed the analysis of the curriculum vitae and, after a personal interview with the initially selected ones, defined the professionals who would be allocated to the project, using several academic areas, enhancing the knowledge level of the team. Also, agreements were made with universities for the construction of an academic model for the management and monitoring of issues and supervision to be developed, as well as the organizational structure modeling, adopting the best practices of O & M - Organization and Methods.

c. What were the main obstacles encountered? How were they overcome? No more than 500 words
The biggest barrier encountered was the exponential volume of information beyond the capacity of natural processing. This isn’t different from the State default procedure, which collects, through taxes, private funds and reinvests them into society in the form of public goods and services. The information society phenomenon leads to an increase of complexity in supervising the public resources management in the Brazilian state, given the continental size of Brazil and decentralized execution of government programs. Although the Government owns all the data of its revenues and costs, issues such as complexity, dispersion of information across databases, various different technology platforms and the volume of information resulting from the actions of public managers, makes information extraction and processing of useful knowledge an extremely complicated task whether performed with traditional methods of investigation and audit. Hence whether the difficulty in monitoring effectively the performance of public managers is enlarged because of increased volume and complexity of this operation, then it’s appropriate to decrease the entropy of this complex system through the use of modern technologies in information processing. Latterly, considering the possibility of an ideal evolution, knowledge improvement about the process will take not only the exposure of shortcomings and/or irregularities in the management, but also the scenarios construction and identification of weak points, even before the public resource being spent. To illustrate the challenge’s size, only the original database of Bolsa Família, a program of direct income transfer, which benefits families living in extreme poverty in Brazil, contains approximately 50 (fifty) million people, with registration information, conditionalities’ compliance, among other information from beneficiaries. Crossing the Bolsa Familia database with IRS taxpayers database, consisting of about 180 (one hundred and eighty) million individuals consumed several days of computer processing in CGU. Another complicating factor is obtaining some essential databases for the proper development of the subject, especially of some information systems in the Federal Government. This subject demands a working body of the CGU's senior management with agencies database’s managers for overcoming barriers to acquiring them. Another important factor is the need of knowing in detail all the attributes/records of databases used in each subject studied by observing its peculiarities, formats, technology platform and data reliability, from all of the databases obtained. In this case, it’s counted on with the selection of auditors of the CGU itself, analyzing the profile of professionals with extensive experience and knowledge of the issues inherent in public expenditure.

d. What resources were used for the initiative and what were its key benefits? In no more than 500 words, specify what were the financial, technical and human resources’ costs associated with this initiative. Describe how resources were mobilized
The investment with the acquisition of the technology infrastructure and solutions for the ODP project was around US$ 400,000 (four hundred thousand U.S. dollars), including hardware and advanced software, and even analyst training in the tools acquired. Regarding human resources, hiring by public entrance examination process of approximately fifteen professionals - Finance and Control Analyst job title - with bachelor’s degree minimum, from the most diverse academic backgrounds, including a few with graduate’s degree, as for example, Statistics, Accounting, Engineering, Law, Computing, Finance Analyst, Business Intelligence Analyst – BI Analyst, among others. Since the ODP implementation, CGU has been investing regularly in training its staff, either in technological tools, as well in project management techniques, based on cutting-edge scientific methodology. One can include the adequacy of physical infrastructure, with approximately 300 square meters (3.229 square feet), designed for the allocation of the ODP staff, which manages and executes the tasks. In this same environment, there is an area fully equipped to receive up to 4 (four) auditors to work together with the dedicated team, being selected based on their degree of expertise in the work to be developed. The board responsible for the implementation of the ODP had full support from the CGU’s managers to mount the unit, through a specific Ordinance (internal normative document), which supported the necessary procedures for the venture success.

Is the initiative sustainable and transferable?
The work’s philosophy created for the ODP is perfectly possible to be transferred to other public bodies, so much so that the ODP project was presented to the Inter-American Development Bank - IDB, which approved a grant to CGU of US$ 626,000 (six hundred and twenty-six thousand dollars) for investment in the consolidation of established methodology, including the acquisition of new IT solutions such as the publication of information generated to civil society, and yet the replication of the model in the Federation units - under the state governments. In the case of replication of the model, using part of the resources provided by the IDB, the CGU hopes to materialize in two Brazilian States, the pilot ODP.nano (internal nomenclature used for the similar intelligence unit), adapted to their peculiarities, size, skills, budget and needs. Based on the criteria established by the CGU, such as the processes degree's automation of public expenditure, the degree of transparency in contracts and also the existence of technical cooperation between the Federal Agency - CGU and the State Agency, the States of Bahia and Santa Catarina were chosen. These, as a first step, will receive the entire infrastructure of IT solutions and the intelligence transfer of the modeling process. It is expected that both ODP.nano begin operating in 2012. It started in 2010 with the Government of Costa Rica discussions for the conclusion of the Term of Agreement for exchanging experiences between both Offices of the Comptroller General (in the Federal sphere) where one of the pillars will be the transfer of the ODP work’s philosophy, considering every detail of the Costa Rican reality. In regard to the project’s sustainability, only with actions of reviews and amendment of rules and procedures arising from the work already undertaken, brought increased control and efficiency of public spending, thus saving resources, funded the ODP during his existence. It is also important to note the cultural change arising with the creation of the ODP, as both the auditors of the CGU, and especially policy makers, began to have qualified information to support them in performing their activities, either the control or the management of resources, respectively.

What are the impact of your initiative and the lessons learned?
The Public Spending Observatory - ODP, in operation since December 2008, established itself as the unit of production of strategic information of the Office of the Comptroller General - CGU. Much of the information generated has already been made available periodically for public managers of the federal public administration within the executive branch, supporting the improved management of financial resources arising from the payment of taxes, maximizing the investment in the continuing improvement of Brazilians citizens. The press has published stories with content that resulted of the subjects studied by the ODP. As an example: http://www1.folha.uol.com.br/folha/brasil/ult96u646413.shtml http://www.estadao.com.br/estadaodehoje/20090727/not_imp408815,0.php In 2009, ODP has been awarded on two occasions. The first in June by the Instituto CONIP – Conhecimento, Inovação e Práticas de TI na Gestão Pública (Knowledge, Innovation and IT Practices in Public Management), non-profit NGO who perceives the successful practices in public management in Brazil. The ODP was awarded in the category Projetos – Iniciativa de Sucesso (Projects - Success Initiative), among more than 150 inscriptions. The second award was received in December, in the category "e-democracy" as one of the twenty most innovative projects in electronic government of public enterprises in a federal, state or municipal level. This prize was awarded by the Revista TI & Governo (IT & Government Magazine). The selection criteria included innovativeness, impact on public administration, social relevance and transparency. And finally in 2010, the ODP was awarded with the Prêmio Excelência em Governo Eletrônico (e-Gov 2010) (Excellence Award in Electronic Government), granted by the Associação Brasileira de Entidades Estaduais de Tecnologia da Informação e Comunicação (Brazilian Association of State Entities for Information Technology and Communication) and the Ministério do Planejamento, Orçamento e Gestão (Ministry of Planning, Budget and Management). In this specific case, the projects are evaluated within the following criteria: originality, modernization of the services offered, democratization of access or of opportunities, interaction with government, roles integration, usability and easy of access, technical quality of the initiative, security and privacy impacts and outcomes, and possible replication.


Institution Name:		Office of the Comptroller General
Institution Type:		Government Agency
Contact Person:		Gilson Libório de Oliveira Mendes
Title:		Director
Telephone/ Fax:		55 (61) 2020-7277
Institution's / Project's Website:		55 (61) 2020-6906
E-mail:		liborio@cgu.gov.br
Address:		SAS, Quadra 01, Bloco A, Edifício Darcy Ribeiro, s. 728
Postal Code:		70070905
City:		Brasília
State/Province:		Distrito Federal
Country:		Brazil

The Problem

Solution and Key Benefits

Actors and Stakeholders

(a) Strategies

(b) Implementation

(c) Overcoming Obstacles

(d) Use of Resources

Sustainability and Transferability

Lessons Learned

Contact Information