4. Developing the supply of innovation leadership in Brazil’s federal administration

Identifying and mapping current leadership competencies

Supply-side interventions first require a competency mapping to identify the existing supply. Competency mapping ensures that the skills and competencies are readily identified and available when there is demand. It also helps to better align development initiatives to ensure they are addressing real gaps.

To start addressing this challenge, the former Ministry of Planning, in partnership with ENAP and others, has developed a data bank that has the potential to serve this purpose. This type of initiative has already been used in some of the Brazilian federal administration organisations that carry out selective procedures for appointed positions, like the Bank of Brazil. These internal data banks include information about professional competencies of civil servants who can potentially be qualified for appointed positions (Camões and Balué, 2015) and score potential candidates according to their experience and training. This could be a way to pre-qualify potential civil servant candidates for certain positions. The current database - Sigepe Talent Bank - can potentially start cross-referencing the existing civil service databases to compile more variables, such as skills developed outside work.

By becoming an online repository of civil servants’ skills, competencies and experiences, the Talent Bank initiative could help to begin systematising the leadership competency supply which currently exists within the civil service, to ensure that those looking for talent are able to reach beyond their own networks to find it. This may be an important step towards breaking down the reliance on personal networking which currently appears to dominate selection and appointment processes. At the same time, if the database remains exclusive to civil servants, it may reduce the visibility for people who are not civil servants but whose skills could be relevant for DAS positions.

Some OECD countries have been testing similar approaches. The Talent Cloud is one of the most ambitious projects of the government of Canada: this programme aims to become a validated, searchable repository of cross-sector talent (Box 4.2).

In parallel, the former Ministry of Planning has conducted a census of civil servants from the specialist in public policy and government management career. In partnership with the National School of Public Administration, in the second half of 2018 the Secretary of Management undertook a Demographic and Professional Trajectory Census of specialists in public policy and government management, in order to better understand who government managers are, where they are and what results they have helped to achieve in the federal public administration. This census is expected to provide better knowledge of the civil servants from this career, their career paths, experience and skills.

The emergence of competency-based leadership training in Brazil

More information about the available skills should help Brazil move forward with the competency-based approach designed back in 2006. Competency-based management (gestão por competências) was introduced in 20066 to help plan, monitor and assess capacity-building activities. Its focus was on identifying the knowledge, skills and attitudes needed to perform civil service functions.7 While this has yet to formalise into a national competency framework, it has served as a driver for reorienting and strengthening training opportunities and individual development.

The gradual emergence of competency frameworks in different institutions across the Brazilian federal administration and beyond is a strong indicator that organisations are open to taking a more structured approach to leadership development. Competency models have become foundational in leadership training. Various institutions in the Brazilian federal public administration, including the former Ministry of Planning, ENAP, the Court of Accounts and the Brazilian Development Bank, have developed their own frameworks to anchor their leadership development programmes (see Chapter 2). All of these programmes were created with the recognition that existing opportunities for leadership development were insufficient.

In parallel, Brazil’s Staff Development Policy and Guidelines8 regulate professional development through annual training plans for public organisations. Until 20109 this policy was steered by a committee which included the Secretary of Management (SEGES), the Secretariat of Personnel Management (SEGEP) and ENAP. While this policy acknowledged the importance of professional development, it never lived up to initial expectations. The evolution of the political context since its approval led to regular changes in priorities and operational objectives, as well as to the difficult task of co-ordinating multiple decision makers with conflicting priorities (Camões and Meneses, 2016).

The current legal basis to train people for DAS and FCPE positions10 is the same decree that introduced competency-based training in the federal administration. This decree also gives ENAP the responsibility to co-ordinate and oversee the management of training programmes for civil servants by schools of government of the federal administration, municipalities and foundations.

ENAP: A core institution for developing innovation skills

ENAP has been critical to the development of a competency-based approach by focusing on skills development through Masters, leadership development, senior executive programmes as well as specialised and general skills training. ENAP has gradually assumed the role of an informal “hub” or adviser for many leadership programmes. Although ENAP does not have the authority or ability to create a singular leadership curriculum that organisations use to develop leaders, the school’s presence in the formation of many of the existing programmes at least promotes a general coherence in the competency models and convergence in ideas and theories.

ENAP has also gradually become a hub for innovation skills development in the last few years. As of 2016 ENAP became a scientific, technological and innovation institution (instituição científica, tecnológica e de inovação), responsible for research and service development relevant to improve the efficiency and the quality of public services. The 2019 decree11 reinforces ENAP’s role in this field by centralising in ENAP the elaboration and execution of staff development programmes related to public sector innovation for improving the efficiency and quality of the services provided to citizens.

The development of public sector innovation within public administration schools is also common in some OECD countries. In France, ENAP’s French homologue (École nationale d’administration) is one of the founding members of the Chaire Innovation Publique, one of the first cross-cutting attempts to transform the future of working in the public sector through innovation. In Spain, a 2018 amendment created a Department of Public Sector Innovation in the Institute of Public Administration (INAP), and INAP is gradually becoming a key player in the process of transforming the public administration. To support the emergence of a culture of skills for transformation and innovation, INAP is investing in projects to develop a competency-based approach across the administration (Box 4.3).

Transforming executive innovation training

New forms of executive innovation training are emerging in Brazil and in many OECD countries. These trainings, often conducted by innovation labs in the civil service, are focused on helping leaders understand how to lead innovative projects and provide the support necessary for innovation to thrive. The Government Digital Services in the United Kingdom has developed an Agile for Leadership class, the Canadian government is looking at something similar regarding digital competencies, and Chile and Colombia actively engage senior leaders when their teams are engaged in innovation challenges through the country’s innovation labs. All of these initiatives allow leadership to gain first-hand experience in how innovation happens to better understand how they can support it.

Canada’s Digital Academy was launched in 2018 with the purpose of “placing the public service at the forefront of the digital age and to making its services more secure, faster and easier for all users”. The academy is hosted at the Canada School of Public Service, and its curriculum will support all levels of public servants, including senior civil servants (Box 4.7).

In Estonia, the Top Civil Service Excellence Centre is responsible for the development of Estonia’s senior civil servants. It has developed a training programme that focuses on experiential learning, applying modern problem-solving techniques, and even brain science to help leaders better understand themselves, build innovation skills and conduct activities on site where “seeing is believing”. This programme has gained such popularity that the governments of Finland, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom requested their leaders participate.

ENAP’s Training Programme for Senior Executives (Programa de Capacitação para Altos Executivos) has become a reference in the field of executive leadership training in Brazil’s public sector, and includes an important component on innovation. Created as a pilot project at the end of 2015, this programme was one of the most recent initiatives to map and develop the skills and competencies required to professionalise politically appointed public leaders. ENAP’s training is not mandatory, so the strategy is about creating a diversified offer in terms of themes and formats to nudge leaders into self-selecting for training.

By targeting training at appointed SCS positions, ENAP is also building bridges between the political and the administrative spheres. Especially within Brazil’s system where the political-administrative interface is blurred, transforming the public sector in a sustainable way requires preparing leadership to face technical and political challenges, regardless of whether they are appointed from the civil service or from other sectors. To address this, ENAP’s approach is designed around real-life leadership challenges. This programme also offers different learning modalities to build these bridges, ranging from international training cycles, conferences and individual coaching to more informal events such as thematic dinners for senior executives and gatherings of the programme’s alumni.

The complexity of leadership and its challenges also means that developing leaders is more than a repetitive exercise; it is an iterative process. ENAP’s different training programmes are dynamic and grounded in partnerships with prestigious training institutions worldwide, namely the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University and the French School of Public Administration. One of the most recent editions (August 2018) focused on “Leadership and Innovation in a Context of Change”. During the course, participants worked on an ongoing challenge while developing skills and competencies related to adaptive leadership, technology management or innovation in public policies.

ENAP’s iterative approach to the Training Programme for Senior Executives involved testing different practice-oriented methodologies leading to a wide variety of complementary learning paths (Box 4.8). The programme’s success following ENAP’s restructuring in 2016 created the opportunity to strengthen ENAP’s mission to “plan, direct, co ordinate, guide and evaluate the training offer for senior executives”. ENAP’s Leadership Development Programme, a project-oriented course focused on developing business acumen in particular areas and innovative skills, combines online preparation and discussion with classroom training, and is targeted at managerial positions across the federal government.

There are also cases across the federal administration where civil servants were encouraged to attend leadership training programmes. A programme in the former Ministry of Planning established that civil servants could take training leave for priority fields for the ministry such as leadership, economics or public administration. Civil servants applied to the programme through a selection process, then were eligible to attend long-term courses, including Master and PhD degrees. The increase in the qualification of the ministry’s staff led in practice to an increase in the qualification of the people later appointed for leadership positions.

Investing in leadership development for innovation raises a challenge about ensuring the quality and impact of the training provided. In this context, it could be relevant to develop some sort of certification mechanism, such as, for example, France’s “School of Management and Human Resources” label, which consists in the certification, by a committee of independent experts, of training programmes which are either interministerial or relevant for more than one ministry. Despite the benefits of certification, attention should be paid to avoid creating overburdening processes.

To strengthen coherence around public sector innovation, France’s Interministerial Directorate for Public Transformation (Direction Interministérielle pour la Transformation Publique), under the Prime Minister’s Office, has created a “Public Transformation Campus”. The campus provides team training on project management, user centricity, digital, innovative approaches and managerial transformation. It also brought together respected actors in the field of innovation training in France. This includes, for example, the National School of Administration (École Nationale d’Administration), the Institute for Public Management and Economic Development (Institut de la Gestion Publique et du Développement Économique), or the National Centre for Territorial Civil Service (Centre National de la Fonction Publique Territoriale). The campus aims to develop synergies among existing training programmes and promotes the training delivered by its partners.

Reinventing skills development through innovation labs

ENAP’s innovation lab, GNova, uses design-thinking methodologies to help public institutions address their challenges. GNova’s approach is an interesting way to link experiential learning with classroom training by supporting bottom-up innovation processes, also tested in other countries. Teams from GNova partner with the civil servants from the client organisation to co-create and experiment solutions and prototypes, for example to improve the delivery of services to citizens.

In Chile, the Laboratorio de Gobierno developed a programme called Experimenta to develop innovation skills in a selected group of public employees through a learning-by-doing approach. This “learning-by-doing” approach whereby innovation labs partner with other public sector organisations to collaborate, co-create and design has become a popular and effective way to build innovation capacity and experience in organisations.

Investing in collaborative partnerships beyond the public sector

ENAP and other public sector organisations are not the only actors interested in improving the competencies of public leaders to steer public sector innovation in Brazil. Civil society is playing a key role in advancing innovation skills in the public sector. For example, the “Support Programme for the Development of Public Leadership” has emerged to help build public leaders’ capacity, including elected officials, engaged in changing Brazil based on the principles of integrity, democracy and sustainability. The programme is the result of a partnership between the “Political Action Network for Sustainability (Rede de Ação Política pela Sustentabilidade) and the Lemann Foundation. The content is developed by the two partner institutions and includes training on themes such as health, public safety and climate change. The second edition (2018) was open to 20 leaders throughout Brazil. Other examples include the Dom Cabral Foundation, which is working with ENAP, the Ministry of Economy (previously Ministry of Planning) and others on leadership training and development based on various leadership competency models; and the Getúlio Vargas Foundation has also created leadership programmes aimed at the public sector. These organisations are playing an important role to help develop a more mature understanding of the competencies needed for public sector leaders in Brazil and to bridge the gap between the public sector and civil society, the private sector, and academia.

Collaborative partnerships between the public sector and external stakeholders can help advance public leadership for innovation. Such partnerships can create access to a wider body of knowledge, perspective and technology, and help generate a better understanding of problems, policy issues, and define and test potential solutions (see, for example, OECD 2017b). In the field of leadership skills and competencies for innovation, the launch of the Public Innovation Chair (Chaire Innovation Publique, CIP) in France provides a good example of this type of collaborative partnerships. The CIP’s approach focuses on bringing in different stakeholders to prepare current and future senior civil servants to innovate through design, digital technology and behavioural insights.

Using networks to support innovators

Interest in public sector innovation has been growing throughout the Brazilian federal administration. The public innovation awards were established in 1996 to reward new ways of working in the public sector. In 2016, the then Ministry of Planning and ENAP organised the first Innovation Week and ENAP hosted the first innovation lab (GNova). In parallel, public sector innovation became a growing field of research among Brazilian academics and practitioners. Some of the first reflections and analysis of the Brazilian experience helped map trends, success stories, opportunities and barriers for innovation (see, for example, ENAP/IPEA [2017]).

Innovation remained a relatively isolated activity in the federal administration landscape. While awards and events celebrated innovation across the public sector, initiatives and teams remain the exceptional way of working in the administration. The lack of a clear mandate to innovate possibly reinforced the perception of risk associated with innovation; most innovations are very context-specific, which made them hard to scale up or to replicate in different contexts (ENAP/IPEA, 2017).

Despite little systematisation of innovation across the administration, the success stories helped support an emerging innovation-oriented organisational culture. Awards and events give visibility to initiatives and help people learn from each other’s experience (OECD, 2015), which can help motivate civil servants. Awards are widely used across OECD countries to recognise successful public sector innovation in different areas of the civil service. In the United States, the Presidential Rank Awards Programme recognises a select group of career members of the Senior Executive Service for exceptional performance. In Chile, the Funciona! recognises teams of civil servants who have created innovative initiatives in their institutions, with an effect on internal efficiency and/or in the quality of services provided to citizens (OECD, 2017a).

Besides giving visibility to innovations, events and awards can also help to build a community of practice around innovation. Innovators are change agents and, as such, they often struggle to get support within their own organisations. Facilitating communication between innovators, who often face similar challenges, can help them support each other, strengthen their motivation and capacity for action, and even help scale up innovations (OECD, 2017). This type of informal, self-driven network is a common form of innovators networks in OECD countries. In Finland, for example, the Change Makers network is a loosely organised and self-managed team of experts from different ministries, with different backgrounds, education and expertise. What is shared among the participants is the need and the will to build up a working culture based on a “whole government” mindset and “crossing the silos” ways of working.

Institutional support to networks of innovators is also an important element to strengthen the visibility and impact of public sector innovation. Formalising innovation networks can help give consistency to different networks, creating a coherent vision of innovation, and consolidating the impact of the network on the public innovation landscape. The gradual launch since 2015 of InovaGov, the Federal Network of Innovation in the Public Sector (Rede Federal de Inovação no Setor Público) responds to that need to formalise networks of innovators. In the Brazilian federal administration context, formalising a network for innovation may also give some legitimacy to time spent on innovation (ENAP/IPEA, 2017). Developed by the Department of Public Management Modernization (Departamento de Modernização em Gestão Pública, Inova) of the former Ministry of Planning, the InovaGov was supported by strong institutional actors such as the Court of Accounts (Tribunal de Contas da União) and the Council of Federal Justice (Conselho de Justiça Federal). InovaGov has grown to become a space where different sectors interact. It creates value by opening the discussions outside the public sector to include businesses, academia and non-governmental organisations.

Networks of innovators are also common across most OECD countries. Similarly to InovaGov, the most common purpose of innovators networks in OECD countries is to help members share their experience, like Portugal’s Common Knowledge Network RCC, which is a collaborative platform to promote the sharing of practices and information about modernisation, innovation and simplification of public administration.

The development of InovaGov raises questions about the role of Inova and of the Ministry of Economy in building the supply of skills for innovation. In many OECD countries, innovators networks build the capacities of members through training provide support to develop specific projects or guidance to public institutions (OECD, 2017). In Chile, the Network of Public Innovators, created in 2015, aims at being a movement of diverse actors motivated by the search for tools, experiences and approaches that facilitate the development of innovations to improve public services for their users. The network employs a threefold strategy that includes collective learning, making public innovation visible and connecting motivations to innovate (OECD, 2017).

While capacity building is not at the core of InovaGov, the network’s missions naturally include some capacity building about innovation tools and practices. Co-ordinating with other training providers, in particular ENAP, is fundamental to develop a shared vision and approach to innovation for Brazil’s federal administration. Having a coherent approach to skills and competencies development can help identify common challenges and needs, in a context of heterogeneity of skills and competencies needs and a myriad of public sector careers that hamper career mobility. As described above, coherence is particularly important when it comes to leaders’ skills and competencies to support innovation.

ENAP is also exploring the potential of formal and informal networks to improve the impact of its leadership programmes. Informal thematic discussions and dinners such as those organised by ENAP, between senior civil servants from different administrations and experts, have the potential to help leaders exchange experiences and discuss challenges, which often help identify shared concerns or commonalities. OECD research indicates that while most OECD countries provide institutional support for innovators networks, informal and self-driven public sector innovation networks are even more common across the OECD (2016a).

Another of ENAP’s major initiative is the Alumni Network of the Senior Executive Training. Regular events for alumni allow them to strengthen personal and professional networks and build additional value from continuous training.

Finally, formalising networks should not come at the expense of informal or non-governmental initiatives. Individual motivation is a powerful driver of innovation and appears to have more influence on the outcome of innovation than formal processes (see, for example, ENAP/IPEA [2017]). In fact, in the past years, Brazil’s civil society has been increasingly involved in discussions to improve innovation and, more broadly, the quality of the public sector. Various initiatives have emerged from the civil society involving the municipal, state and federal level.

The civil society organisation Vetor Brasil has been helping municipalities and states to recruit public leaders and trainees (see Chapter 5). Since its creation in 2015, the recruitment programmes developed by Vetor have enabled the creation of a network of talented and engaged professionals that support excellence in the public service. Likewise, the civil society organisation Brava works to support innovation and digitalisation across government in order to improve public management. It brings together stakeholders and innovators to support a culture of better public management. Brava’s initiatives include working with schools to help students understand policy making and stimulate critical thinking. Brava has also set up an open online platform to inform citizens about public challenges and help identify innovative solutions.

Immediate recommendations

As discussed earlier in the chapter, ENAP has served as both an informal hub for leadership programmes and an early adopter in recognising innovative competencies, creating new curriculum and experimenting with new training models. Because of its unique position and its mission, ENAP is already well positioned to increase its role in promoting and establishing a stronger learning culture in Brazil’s public service today and in the future.

As neither ENAP nor the Secretariat of Planning and Management are likely to be given legal purview over all leadership professional development, both could continue to play a role in the broader system. This means continuing to encourage training providers to work with networks within and outside the civil service. These networks have relevant knowledge and experience which could benefit training programmes, strengthen the link between learning and implementation, and help build stronger bonds between leaders and future leaders in various areas.

Additionally, the Secretariat of Planning and Management could also have the responsibility to make training information easily available for senior civil servants, civil servants and people working in the federal administration. This could be inspired by what already exists in the “Portal do Servidor,” and could consist of an online tool compiling all the information available on training available by topic, tool, date, target group, type of training, price and any other information that might be useful.

Lastly, GNova and ENAP could further develop experiential training methods that connect implementation of innovative projects with capacity building, including at the leadership level. GNova’s training approach for civil servants is a relatively recent one, and will need further iteration. Once the programme is relatively stable, the focus could shift to capacity, scale and replication for an even greater impact.

Second-stage recommendations

ENAP could use its trusted network and expertise to create a unified competency model that can be the foundation of leadership training across the Brazilian ecosystem. This competency model does not need to be built from scratch – ENAP and other organisations should review their own competency models as well as the OECD model from Chapter 3 to firmly establish a leadership competency model that properly emphasises the competencies and skills that Brazil requires of its leaders, especially with innovation skills and mindsets. ENAP should not pursue this alone; it should collaborate with outside organisations, civil society and ministries to co-create an inclusive, shared solution.

The competency framework can also be used to assess the current skills and talents to establish a baseline within the public administration, specific organisations or careers. The Secretariat of Planning and Management could partner with ENAP to pilot a competency assessment methodology. This pilot could be across one ministry, or within a single career, with a view to expanding it in a phased approach. The assessment could use information that is already available, such as that from the Talent Bank (see Box 4.14), which could also align with the competency model to standardise its approach to competency identification and assessment.

Lastly, ENAP could align training with any specific gaps identified based on current available data. With the Talent Bank and the OECD survey, there are already some data to determine if any adjustments need to be made in the training curriculum to ensure that ENAP is responsive to the current strengths and weaknesses within the public sector.

Longer term recommendations

Major changes in a large and complex system like the public sector will produce unexpected outcomes. Trying to evolve and improve the learning system in Brazil’s public sector requires both short-term agility and long-term perspective. Because of this dynamic, the recommendations in this section may continue to evolve and change.

In the longer term it could be useful to more clearly define the roles of the various actors in the system. While there does not need to be a single owner of the leadership development system, the lack of defined roles and responsibilities can cause adoption to slow or stall. The role of ENAP and the Secretariat of Planning and Management are both central, but so is the role of the Staff Development Policy Committee and how it engages with the responsibility to recruit, develop and use innovation-related skills. The role of ministries, institutions, careers and outside actors could also be defined. As with any living system, these roles will continue to shift and evolve, but creating an understanding of the roles and responsibilities in the system to track their evolution will be important so as to better integrate activities, reduce overlap and duplication, and address gaps and emerging needs. This may require the establishment of a training council that can serve to co-ordinate the system and update roles and responsibilities as they evolve.

As with any new model for leadership competencies, training providers could conduct a self-assessment to align training offerings with the new model to ensure the outcomes of the training will produce the newly defined skills and competencies. Based on ENAP’s extensive training, it is likely that much of the training is already fairly aligned, but tweaks may need to be made. Additional adjustment could be considered based on the findings from the public sector competency assessments. For instance, ENAP may invest too heavily, in terms of frequency of classes and curriculum development, in one competency while there are large gaps in a different competency which is going underserved. Again, the Talent Bank – which may need to be tweaked to align with the model – and the OECD survey can serve as a starting point for this analysis.

Regarding roles, ENAP could continue to develop partnerships with other training providers. No organisation has the capacity to train the entire public service, and ENAP should continue to look for trusted partners at the local, national and international level to improve innovative leadership. This also includes civil society organisations and networks both inside and outside the civil service.

Communication and feedback

As with any large-scale initiative that impacts the whole of government, communication with clear signals is critical to success. Communication is needed throughout the process and must be done in a way that can elicit feedback. Communication can serve purposes such as:

• sending a clear signal of what is important

• sharing a consistent vision across the ecosystem

• influencing and impacting behaviours

• allowing for feedback more easily.

For instance, the Secretariat of Planning and Management should work with ENAP to increase the understanding of innovation and innovative leadership through a constant and diverse communication plan. Part of this plan could link to specific trainings, but it should also specifically focus on winning the hearts and minds of the public sector with an aspirational vision for current and future leaders. Because of ENAP’s role of creating competency frameworks and curriculum as well as its informal role of supporting other public sector leadership programmes within various ministries and institutions, it is in a unique position to directly influence other institutions and ministries in terms of adopting the framework.