Questions/Answers

Transforming public administration in competence, knowledge, innovation, attitude, result and value: this is the role that Enap, a legal entity under public law, assumed since its creation in 1986. It was founded with the promise of transforming the culture and the mental model of each public servant, with the mission of training and developing people that are able to innovate, reach results and serve society. For more than 30 years, has been performing an unique role in innovating the culture of public administration and accelerating the transformation in education and in organizational, and also digital, social or economic management. When the pandemic began, Enap took the lead not only in the rapid response to the health of its servers, adopting measures of social distancing and remote work, but also rethought its activities to reflect and create knowledge on the new pandemic scenario. The quick decisions taken were added to the efficiency in execution and, as a consequence, the whole series of activities previously exposed became possible. Enap has shown itself to be agile, with adaptive capacity, and above all, efficient in its role of creation and propagation of knowledge within the Federal Government. The School continued working, making the deliveries it commonly made while reinventing itself internally and giving quick answers to its public. By adapting its internal functioning, work protocols and team management while creating value in an unprecedented thematic for the public sector and Brazilians, Enap has shown that it is an institution focused on serving society, capable of facing challenges and contributing to the public service of the future. Enap has developed several actions in this thematic, addressing the following axis: 1. Support Actions in the Resolution of Public Problems, 2. Research Actions and Dissemination of Knowledge, 3. Training Actions, and 4. Internal Organization Actions.

The quick decisions taken at the beginning of the pandemic were added to the efficiency in execution and, as a consequence, the whole series of activities previously exposed became possible. Enap has shown itself to be agile, with adaptive capacity, and above all, efficient in its role of creation and propagation of knowledge within the Federal Government. The School continued working, making the deliveries it commonly made while reinventing itself internally and giving quick answers to its public.

The initiative contributes to SDG 4 and targets 4.4 and 4.c. Enap's mission is to train and develop people capable of innovating, achieving results and serving society. In 2020, Enap carried out 857,714 training courses. It was a growth of 111% compared to 2019, which had already been a record year for training. Enap does not have its own staff of teachers, but it opens periodic enrollments for employees with the aim of expanding the staff of teachers and facilitators. Employees are hired for the development and execution of programs and courses in the on-site, blended and distance modalities. The initiative also contributes to SDG 9, target 9.b. Enap continues to strengthen itself as a Think Tank. The production of publications and unpublished studies by the School has repercussions in the main vehicles of communication in Brazil. We became protagonists in public sector agendas, gaining greater prominence as a scientific reference for public policies in Brazil. In addition, Enap is responsible for prospecting, fostering, disseminating and promoting a culture of innovation within the Public Administration.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, Enap has developed several actions addressing the theme of Covid-19. Launched the Covid-19 Challenges platform, the Call for Government Transformation Projects aimed at reducing the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic (SuperaCovid), provided new distance courses aimed at disseminating information about the pandemic, held online events; launched publications and surveys on teleworking and safe return to face-to-face work. All these actions allowed the participation of civil servants and citizens from all parts of the country, as they were made available on the Enap portal and the events were transmitted virtually.

Enap has played a role in innovating the culture of public administration and accelerating the transformation in education, organizational management, as well as digital, social or economic. Faced with a pandemic that ravaged the world and no one knew exactly how to act and how to prevent it, Enap took the lead not only in the rapid response to the health of its servers, adopting measures of social isolation and remote work, but also rethinking its activities to reflect and create knowledge about the new epidemic scenario. The School proved to be agile, with adaptive and efficient capacity in its role of creating and spreading knowledge within the scope of the Federal Government. The actions taken in the context of the pandemic allowed several public institutions in the country to have access to quality materials and events. The school held several online events addressing the topic of the pandemic, launched publications and research, in addition to promoting challenges for the development of solutions to face the economic and social impacts caused by the COVID-19 pandemic

Enap, in its initiative, did not adopt gender differences, considering that the Covid-19 pandemic that afflicted Brazil and the world attacked men and women, without differentiation.

The target audience of the initiatives were public administration institutions through the Call for Projects “Call for Projects for Transformation in Government” with a focus on mitigating the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic. Also federal, state and municipal civil servants, who were able to follow the various remote events held by Enap. In addition to citizens, who have access to courses made available at EVG. Senior Enap servers were directly involved in the event "Oficina Cafezinho com Tecnologia" which enabled them to adapt to the new reality of remote work to know the main technological tools used during telework, promoting digital inclusion and the rescue of individual potentials to the work. School employees were also the focal point in the activities carried out by the Quality of Life Program (PQVT/Enap), which held online conversations with servers aiming to improve workers' health and quality of life during remote work .

In the Desafios platform the first step is to identify initial problems and then start the process of understanding and reframing the problem in three steps: understanding the problem, going to the field and redefining the challenge. With the problem reframed, we identified the target audience of the challenge and designed the competition defining, among other things, what we hope to receive from the participants. With the documents produced and resources mobilized, it is time to launch the challenge. We mobilize the innovation ecosystems that we identified when defining the target audience and await the receipt of proposals from participants. From there, it is to screen and evaluate the proposals for innovative solutions according to the criteria defined in the notices, choose the winners and award the prizes.

The biggest challenge faced by Enap was to re-adapt its activities to remote work. It was necessary to contract new licenses for the use of videoconferencing tools. We need to develop new methodology and learning tools, readjust teams for remote work and transform classroom courses into remote courses in a short period of time. There was a challenge in managing student attendance in courses that were previously on-site. Teams had to be prepared for remote work. And we had to be quick in taking decisions to resolve the adversities.

For more than 30 years, Enap has played a role in innovating the culture of public administration and accelerating the transformation in education, organizational management, as well as digital, social or economic. Thus, with the pandemic, it had to assume its role as a School of Government and take the lead in actions and policies to support the fight against Covid-19. Thus, it held several events with the participation of national and international experts to discuss the pandemic and launched the Desafios Challenges notices for the construction of solutions to fight the pandemic in the economic, social and organizational context.

As the Covid-19 pandemic was a new issue around the world and in Brazil, Enap was not inspired by other institutions. It adopted its own actions based on the practices already adopted in the School's routine activities.

Enap uses emerging and frontier technologies such as Wi-Fi 6, Cloud services, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Data Analysis (Data Analytics) and Drones. These technologies can improve the delivery of public services by modernizing the forms of delivery. They also provide data for the government, which can better map the needs of consumers of Enap services and help improve education services. These solutions help to promote Enap's digital services that can be found on the Government Digital website: https://www.gov.br/pt-br/search?SearchableText=enap. In addition, the adoption of photovoltaic solar energy and Internet of things (IoT) at Enap are under study.

The objective of the Desafios Platform is to create an environment in which government agencies themselves engage in the open innovation agenda and independently promote their own challenges. It is intended to promote an environment that encourages intersectorial innovation. Thus, the new version of the platform was launched in November 2021 with an environment dedicated to offering content on open innovation and a toolkit to be used by public agents in creating their own challenges.

As Enap is a Federal Government School, covering the entire national territory, the actions carried out could be absorbed by public institutions across the country, as well as by public servants at the federal, state and municipal levels. In addition, many of the actions carried out are available on Enap's youtube, allowing access by public servants and citizens.

With the advent of the pandemic, a sense of urgency and public spirit permeated the activities of public agents and the construction of policies. In this way, it was possible to significantly increase the exchange of databases and collaboration between agencies and public agents, making public services more effective and efficient. Local authorities in Brazil tried to make both services and data more transparent and accessible and Enap was directly involved in this initiative. The School was also involved in expanding cooperative activities with the local community, including the donation of goods, such as the donation of baskets (sheets, pillowcases, blankets, mattresses) to the local government for needy hospitals.

At the international level, it was also possible to carry out virtual cooperative activities with partner foreign institutions, which has made possible the exchange of content and courses, the holding of joint online events and virtual stages with the participation of foreign students.

Oui

Cátedras is a process in which the scholarship holders are accompanied with partial evaluations from a team of evaluators until the end. In the case of the Fast Track Chairs “Public policies to fight the Covid-19 pandemic” there were three months of monthly meetings with evaluators, some of them external to Enap. The Survey “Remote work in the context of covid-19” had national partnerships such as the Department of Management and Personnel Performance of the Ministry of Economy and the partnership of Duke University in the United States. The Survey “Safe Return to In-person Work” also had the partnership of the Secretariat for Management and Personnel Performance of the Ministry of Economy and the partnership of the World Bank.

The indicator used in the Fast Track Cátedras was the number of reports converted into Cadernos Enap (https://repositorio.enap.gov.br/handle/1/211). The surveys “Remote work in the context of covid-19” and “Safe Return to In-Person Work” used the collection of respondents' perceptions as a tool to obtain reliable indicators to guide public policies aimed at minimizing teleworking problems and public policies related to to return to face-to-face work in the federal public administration, respectively.

In the Fast Track Cátedras, all ten reports were approved as Cadernos Enap and are being published by Enap gradually throughout 2021. The results collected by the survey analyzed by Duke University indicated some sensitive points for the difficulty in telecommuting, such as the issue of small children and the greater difficulty of women in maintaining the same pre-pandemic level of efficiency. In the survey analyzed by the World Bank, it was detected that 57% of public servants preferred to return to work in person on a staggered basis and that their greatest fear would be transmitting the virus to their families. The results of both surveys made Enap rethink its projects for returning to face-to-face work.

Enap, as a school of government, has the role of transforming public administration into competence, knowledge, innovation, attitude, results and value. The School is linked to the Ministry of Economy and had the support of this Ministry in most of its actions. The School acted efficiently and quickly in its role of creating and spreading knowledge within the Federal Government, providing its target audience with the opportunity to reflect and create knowledge about the new epidemic scenario. The various initiatives developed by the school in the context of Covid-19 had the support and partnership of other national and international institutions. In the new version of the Desafios Platform, Enap´s intention is that the government agencies create an environment in which they get involved in the open innovation agenda and independently promote their own challenges, stimulating cross-sector innovation.

For the actions of the Desafios platform, Enap had the support of some Secretariats of the Ministry of Economy, such as the Special Secretariat for Productivity and Competitiveness and the Sub-secretariat for the Development of Micro and Small Businesses, Entrepreneurship and Crafts. Usually, this support is given through the transfer of financial resources. For the Surveys, Enap had a partnership with Duke University and the World Bank, in addition to the Secretariat for Management and Personnel Performance of the Ministry of Economy. These partners carry out the partial and final evaluations of the reports delivered by the grantees. In addition, they analyzed the results collected, generating indicators to guide the Federal Government to adopt public policies aimed at minimizing teleworking problems and at the return of federal civil servants to face-to-face work. The events held within the scope of FrontEnd had the participation of nationally and internationally renowned experts. They addressed current and relevant issues, disseminating information that helped to better understand the pandemic moment.

Online distance learning will continue. The challenge for Enap (and other schools of government and public administration institutes) is to prepare public servants to respond to the increasingly complex challenges linked to global problems, as is the case with this pandemic. Thus, it is important to include specialists from anywhere in the world in the debates and reflections that the School offers. With the new remote formats, these experts can contribute virtually to the discussion of strategic issues. This is a lesson, a good practice that we must incorporate and encourage making possible to count on the participation of great international experts, exchanging their experiences with public servants who face complex problems and challenges in our countries. From the point of view of access, of the total number of public servants in Brazil, 37.2% are employed in the Southeast Region; 22.4% in the Northeast Region; 19.9% ​​in the Midwest; 11.1% in the South and 9.4% in the North. This shows that the online distance education strategy is important to guarantee the access of public agents to Enap's training and, without a doubt, the distance offers will continue to be explored even after the pandemic.