State and Governance Reform Study Program

In line with its strong commitment to training personnel for the modernization of the Brazilian Public Administration, Escola Brasileira de Administração Pública is dedicated to the production of new knowledge relating to changes in the institutional framework of social life, the process of functional differentiation of the State and the alterations in management practices of the Republic.
Ever alert to these transformations, as well as the measures implemented and social repercussions of the Reform of the State and the Administration, EBAP, through RAP magazine, will publish as from this edition, a bulletin update of the program for following up the Reform of the State and the Public Administration, which intends to collate information, produce analytical studies, promote debates and stimulate the participation of all interested parties in the discussion on this theme of national relevance.
Systematic monitoring is highly important, since important charges have occurred on paper, in the morphology and the sphere of action of the Brazilian State without the State's Ministry of Administration and Reform taking any notice and without public opinion realizing it. To give a few examples, one need only mention the measures relating to deregulation and privatization of sectors, which are not under the scrutiny of the crossfire of the media.
This work marks the resumption of an initiative that began in 1990, when a series of research studies were conducted to evaluate the first 100 days of the administrative reform under the Collor Government. Another important step in this direction was taken more recently with a series of research studies conducted within the scope of the State and Governance Reform Study Program, the latest results of which were published in RAP N. 6/97. EBAP is now creating a permanent program to monitor the measures adopted in the scope of State Reform, and the political and social implications thereof, in order to gather data to subsidize new research projects in addition to those currently in progress.
Monitoring the Reform of the State and Public Administration will produce a well-structured database which will permit different viewpoints and angles on the same theme, thereby generating not only a new body of information but also measures for the analysis and production of technical inferences. It will permit both the rationalization of the use of available information, analysis and research on the reform of the State and its infrastructure and the subsidization of new research projects, favoring debate, exchange of experiences and comparative studies.
To this end, the program will arrange for the construction of two databases that will provide information to interested parties on: a) measures adopted and their effect on the State infrastructure and public management and its impact on society at large, and; b) the bibliography created since 1980 on the theoretical landmarks in State Reform, the theory and practice in this field and the experiments conducted since that time.
Making this information readily available will be of great interest in order to:

• Promote national debate on reform of the State and the administration;
• Create points of reference in analysis and research both inside the public sector and outside it;
• Provide the public sector with information that may assist in the formulation of long-term public policy and government planning;
• Disseminate information, studies and research on State reform.