Questions/Answers

The Virtual School of Government (EV.G) is an initiative designed by the National School of Public Administration - Enap and consists of a unique and single portal to offer distance learning for public servants and citizens from all over the country. EV.G offers online programs and courses from international, national and local institutions on different themes related to public administration, citizenship and sustainable development. The solution seeks the challenge of contributing to the training and development of millions of public servants and citizens by centralizing what can be centralized in terms of economies of scale (hosting, academic management, certificate issuance, school transcripts), without inhibiting the decentralization of what should remain decentralized (autonomy to create courses and define educational methodologies, management and analysis results, definition of training policies) in order to guarantee the permanent creative and collaborative process of educational institutions. For the public agents and citizens who are looking for training in the public service, the portal offers a unified course catalog from the main schools of government and training institutions at the national and local level. In addition, the student has access to a unique registration and login to carry out their courses, as well as a unified school transcript. For partner institutions, EV.G offers a series of services, depending on the type of partnership the institution has with the initiative. Among offered services, there is the hosting of courses, the academic management of offers and the consolidation and treatment of data.

The initiative is a human-centered design solution for an educational policy. Brazil has a huge challenge to implement this kind of policy, especially when we consider the number of 1.2 million federal public servants and 10 million states and municipal public servants, spread across 27 states and 5,570 municipalities. Based on principles of transparency, sharing, collaboration and continuous improvement, EV.G has become one of the most innovative educational policies, through digital transformation, that enables free access to higher quality of education all over the country, filling digital gaps in terms of connections, time and literacy and leaving no one behind.

The initiative supports mainly the SDG 4 (ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all) on the targets 4.3, 4.4, 4.5, 4.7 and the SDG 17 (strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the global partnership for sustainable development) on 17.9, 17.14, 17.16, 17.17, 17.18, 17.19. Regarding the SDG 4 and its targets, EV.G has concretely contribute to ensure equal access for all woman and men, persons with disabilities, indigenous people to free quality education, as well as to increase the number of adults to improve their skills for employment, decent jobs and entrepreneurship. The initiative is based on the pillar of inclusiveness, that’s why all courses are self-tutoring, free of charge, open, have no limits of registrations and can be taken by anyone and at anytime. Concerning the SDG 17, the reason for EV.G's existence is based on partnerships. Without our partner institutions, the solution would not exist. The government institutions, academia, think tanks, civil society organizations, private sector and international organizations are responsible for designing the courses and that’s why EV.G can deliver a service with different world views, oriented to a diverse population all over the country and beyond.

Environmentally, the initiative is all implemented in a digital network, which is a more conscious solution in terms of sustainability than the face-to-face idea. In social terms, EV.G promotes a universal, transparency, non-discriminatory and equitable multilateral educational system. The portal is all based on the accessibility model in electronic government. EV.G’s team and the AI system are trained to simplify the service without a stereotyped language. In economic terms, EV.G has been shown a solution that reduces costs of infrastructure and management through the gain of scale, enabling the investment of time, resources and effort for planning and evaluation.

EV.G was born in a scenario where there was the prevalence of a distance that was technologically and methodologically outdated, focused on tool management, with the handmade implementation of content in the virtual environment, decentralization in the production and storage of learning objects, without adhering to programming standards, description, search or technical interoperability. The scenario seems needed to change, especially regarding three main trends: mass education, gamification and data analysis. If we include the most recent trends in this assessment, the gap becomes more evident. The dimensions of the Brazilian public service, in terms of geographic dispersion and absolute number of servants, underpin the growing option for a training strategy based on distance courses. EV.G's governance model is unprecedented in the Brazilian public administration history in terms of professional training policy.

The initiative addresses gender inequality by using a language based on non-stereotyped terms. EV.G’s team often has trainings to implement this kind of language, as well as in the artificial intelligence user’s service. The approach is a movement against the discriminatory language that widens digital gaps for women. All courses are open regardless of gender and the course catalog is composed by a number of courses related to human rights and non-discriminatory approaches. Today EV.G has 1,022,314 active women and 734,613 men. 1,996 active students did not want to choose the option, which represents an interesting number to analyze.

Public servants in Brazil are the main target group, which means a number of 12 million potential students. The portal is also open to anyone who is interested in the course and there is no registration restriction. The initiative has improved outcomes by diversifying the thematic areas of the courses, by including diverse partner institutions on board, by investing in the communication channels for all the government bodies, by improving the capacity of responses to the student, by looking for local challenges that servants faced daily and by laying hands of innovative educational methodologies to attract and maintain more students in the portal.

Between 2013 and 2017, Enap achieved a series of advances in the field of distance education. Among these advances, the significant increase in the number of offered courses and certificates issued deserve to be mentioned, as well as the internalization of hosting and administration services on its virtual learning environment, multimedia production and educational planning. At the same period, unlike what happened with Enap, many schools of government and training institutions experienced a scenario of restrictions regarding infrastructure and resources. Experiencing this context of budgetary restrictions, some institutions sought Enap as an alternative for hosting their courses, while other institutions, mainly state and municipal ones, limited themselves to offering assigned courses, without making progress in the development of new courses and in the field of innovation. Given this scenario, the Virtual School of Government – EV.G emerged in 2018 as a solution for new professional education governance. In the first year, the attention was focused on preparing the whole system to host courses already developed and establishing partnerships with key training institutions. This year was marked by constant monitoring of the system, especially regarding the database and the school secretariat. 2019 was the year of consolidation, which means that EV.G’s team work harder to implement the planed solutions, such as virtual assistant to user’s service, patterns for receiving and hosting new courses, communication plan to attract more students and partner institutions, creation of the user journey and advances in the infrastructure. 2020 was the year when the cloud platform was invested to better prepare for the huge increase in the number of registrations, courses and daily access. It was also a year of the evaluation of the current EV.G’s status, based on four pillars: human’s experience, open and digital governance, school management, 2030 Agenda alignment.

The first obstacle was the educational paradigm based on decentralized data. We needed to present in practical examples how the institution could reach more students all over the country in a shared governance model. The second obstacle was the number of evasions. New pedagogical methodologies and patterns were created focused on the human-centered design. The last obstacle was the COVID-19 and the impressive number of new registrations and daily access in the period. The evaluation process was essential to be prepared for the issues that would come and new technologies were incorporated to better response the daily problems of the users.

The problems resulting from a decentralized offer of courses justify the initiative to develop, within the scope of the public administration, a Virtual School of Government. However, the benefits that this solution offers go far beyond solving these problems. From a centralized offer, other little explored gains become possible. It is, therefore, not only a solution for the provision of public service training, but a revolution in the way of thinking and executing this service, especially because it favors investments in new educational paradigms all over the country.

This type of solution that centralizes search services in a human-centered design goes beyond the educational field and is presented in the most varied services, such as accommodation, transportation and food. Different from the profit purpose of some of these known services, EV.G has the objective of democratizing the access to cutting-edge education and consolidating behavior data of the civil servants and citizens that can be important to the better addressing of public policies.

The whole solution is based on frontier technology for distance education. The EV.G’s design is inspired by emerging educational trends and successful initiatives that have managed to incorporate some of these innovations. The unified portal is associated with course hosting services in a Virtual Learning Environment and academic management through a virtual secretariat system shared by partner institutions, data analysis and open access to the complete database. Artificial intelligence is also used as a virtual assistant to answer questions from the students and to send reminders of deadlines and orientations when it perceives absence in the activities.

The initiative is opened to the whole country and can receive contribution from institutions at the global, national and local levels. In 2020 we started to offer courses in English in order to attract institutions and students from other countries. We also encouraged civil society’s entities to design courses related to their movements and host it in the EV.G’s portal. Cases of success have been the courses against the bureaucratic language in public administration. Two courses with an immense number of registrations were developed: ‘First steps to use simple language’ and ‘Simple language approaches the government to the people. How to use it?’ Another movement was the one oriented to accessibility. Three courses were developed: ‘Accessibility in public use spaces in Brazil’, ‘Accessibility in museums’ and ’Accessibility in public use building spaces’. Finally there was the movement for courses related to human rights: ‘Human rights: an universal declaration’, ‘Citizenship and human rights’, ‘Companies and human rights’, ‘protection to human rights: prevention and prohibition of torture’, ‘from policies to actions: rights of elderly people in Brazil’, ‘Promotion of the rights of the population in street situation’, ‘Promotion of racial equality’ and ‘Human rights of children and adolescents’.

EV.G is unprecedented in Latin America as well. There is a potential for transferring this solution by receiving contributions from schools of public administration of the region. Existing networks can help to explore more this idea, such as the Latin American Center for Development Administration (CLAD), which coordinates a network of schools of government from more than 23 countries. This step would be a huge one for the internationalization of the initiative in the region.

EV.G is fully supported by public resources from Enap’s budget and transfers from government institutions to provide, review and offer courses. It is important to mention that institutions who want to host courses in the portal need to be responsible for the costs of development. This governance model exists exactly to share costs and benefits among partner institutions. Regarding human resources, the portal management is coordinated by EV.G’s team which is composed by civil servants and interns from the University of Brasilia. There are also servants from partner institutions designed to support in the field of each partnership.

In financial terms, what makes the initiative sustainable over time is the governance model based on sharing costs that generates ownership to leverage educational solutions among all partner institutions. Once the institution hosts its course, it will only invest resources again to review the content. There is a big difference to models that need to hire professors and tutors in every offer. In institutional terms, EV.G enables a sustainable environment to maintain the courses for a long period of time regardless of the political context, because EV.G brings a holistic narrative of themes without directing to one institution itself.

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The methodology was based on Enap’s strategic planning of 2019. It was a series of actions for strategic alignment (strategic map, vision of future, expected results, goals, indicators and projects). Representatives from all sectors of Enap listed global teaching trends and Enap's goals for the next 10 years. This initial evaluation counted on the support of a consulting company called EloGroup. After this phase, EV.G’s team designed an evaluation report based on Enap’s vision of the future and EV.G’s strategic goals. This evaluation analyzed the design, management, results and outcomes of EV.G, implemented between February 2018 and October 2020.

The evaluation consisted of a desk review of relevant documents (EV.G proposal, digital governance model, system architecture, technological structure, system interface, open data assessment reports and users’ feedbacks), meetings with partner institutions from academia, government, think tanks, innovation labs, civil society and international organizations and beneficiaries. After the desk review, key findings and recommendations were listed based on the Enap’s vision of the future and EV.G’s strategic goals and divided into the following topics: Human’s experience, Open and digital governance, School management, 2030 Agenda alignment.

EV.G increased the number of registrations from a larger and diverse number of municipalities and states in Brazil, as well as people from outside the country, especially after starting to offer courses in English in 2020 and during the pandemic period. It was also important to see that the EV.G’s business plan gives opportunity for those who have gaps in digital connections, lack of money and lack of time, leaving no one behind. Enap also demonstrated an important step for a solution to the problem of fragmentation of the provision of distance training in the public service. The evaluation identified the great impact of consolidating a database on the behavior of public servants in the context of institutional training, subject to analyzes and investigations that support decision-making in favor of a coherent training policy in public service. Regarding the analyses of each one of the courses, the evaluation listed 50 courses adherents to the Agenda 2030. Some challenges are listed and divided in five improvement areas: segmenting and understanding EV.G’s users; strengthening communication channels; reducing user’s effort for registration; transforming the learning experience; establishing connections and relationship with the School.

Nowadays, EV.G is the adopted solution for provision distance training offers at the Brazilian federal public administration. There is an institutional orientation to all federal ministries and agencies that want to develop training courses on their strategic themes to design them based on EV.G’s standards and host them in the portal. At the same time, training institutions from the states and municipalities are also more interested in getting on board. This represents a consolidation of a nationwide solution with little implementation time. A great case of success on how relevant agencies are implementing solutions designed by EV.G is the creation of learning trails composed by a number of related courses and institutions. These trails are called programs and the student who finishes all the courses listed in the trail receives a specific certification of the whole program. One example of learning trail designed by EV.G was the one called ‘Capacity-Building Program for Digital Transformation’. The program has 153 workload hours and is composed by seven courses related to the thematic and developed by different institutions, such as Enap, Ministry of Economy, Brazilian Federal Revenue Office and Brazilian General Comptroller’s Office.

Since EV.G has 58 partner institutions on board at the moment, it is relevant to mention some examples of engagement related to different types of institutions. Regarding the international organizations, we had an important partnership with the World Health Organization (WHO) during the pandemic in developing and hosting the course ‘Emerging respiratory viruses, including COVID-19: methods for detection, prevention, response and control’. This course was the one with the highest number of registrations in 2020. A partnership with the International Organization for Migration (IOM) for the development of the two courses related to migration was really important because of the moment Brazil was facing in terms of challenges on Venezuelan immigration in Roraima, one of the states of Brazil. It was also relevant a partnership among the Civil House of the Presidency of Republic, the Ministry of Economy and the J-PAL Latin America & the Caribbean (LAC) to create a learning trail called Program on Introduction to the Evaluation of Public Policies, composed by four courses. It also important to mention the relevant partnership of the University of Brasilia with the project that selects interns to work in this initiative since the beginning.

The educational paradigm has been questioned and replaced by other models. Technology contributes to the speed and the change possibilities, but is not responsible for its occurrence. The traditional format applied to MOOC models is an example of how technology can promote a breakdown in the educational context, without implying innovation in the methodologies and lessons. The potential to use EV.G in favor of improving and enriching training in the public service is up to the institutions. This potential includes the possibility of associating the platform with communities of practice, the use of games to stimulate continued training and also the identification of talents in the public service based on performance data. This advance depends on institutional decisions regarding the data analysis and greater investment in content production and methodologies. Technological advances in the educational context also put in perspective the [new] role of the trainer. The absence of significant rewards, the lack of digital fluency and low availability for new methodologies can compromise the engagement of trainers in disruptive scenarios such as the EV.G. It is necessary to look for tools and services that attract students, but also trainers for this model. That’s what EV.G plans to improve.