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On November 22, 2017, Decree #9,203 was drafted by the president at the time, Michel Temer, dealing with the governance policy of the Federal Government, its agencies, and foundations.

According to the Decree, public governance is defined as the set of leadership, strategy, and control mechanisms put into practice to evaluate, direct, and monitor management, with a view to conducting public policies and providing services of society’s interest. Listed below are the principles of public governance:

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PRINCIPLES OF PUBLIC GOVERNANCE

1. Responsiveness

2. Integrity

3. Reliability

4. Regulatory Improvement

5. Accountability and Responsibility

6. Transparency

It is equally important to list the Public Governance guidelines:

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PUBLIC GOVERNANCE GUIDELINES

1. Direct actions to seek results for society, finding timely and innovative solutions to deal with limited resources and changing priorities.

2. Promote administrative simplification, the modernization of public management and the integration of public services, especially those provided electronically.

3. Monitor performance and evaluate the design, implementation, and results of policies and priority actions to ensure that strategic guidelines are observed.

4. Articulate institutions and coordinate processes to improve integration between different levels and spheres of the public sector, with a view to generating, preserving, and delivering public value.

5. Ensure that high standards of conduct are incorporated by senior management to guide the behavior of public agents, in line with the functions and responsibilities of their bodies and entities.

6. Implement internal controls based on risk management, which will prioritize strategic prevention actions before sanctioning processes.

7. Evaluate proposals for the creation, expansion or improvement of public policies and the granting of tax incentives, and assess their costs and benefits whenever possible.

8. Maintain a decision-making process guided by evidence, legal compliance, regulatory quality, reduction of bureaucracy, and support for society's participation.

9. Issue and review normative acts, based on regulatory good practices and the legitimacy, stability, and coherence of the legal system, and carrying out consultations on public opinion  whenever convenient.

10. Formally define the functions, jurisdictions, and responsibilities of institutional structures and arrangements.

11. Promote open, voluntary, and transparent communication of the organization's activities and results, in order to strengthen public access to information.

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This same Decree initially created the Interministerial Governance Committee (CIG), whose purpose is to advise the Brazilian President on conducting the governance policy of the Federal Government. The CIG is composed of the President’s Chief of Staff (in the role of coordinator), the Finance Minister, the Planning, Development and Management Minister, and the Transparency and Office of the Comptroller General Minister.

Later, on January 4, 2019, Ordinance 57 was drafted. It establishes guidelines for Federal Government, agencies, and foundations to adopt procedures for structuring, executing and monitoring their integrity programs.

Hence the concept of UGI, that is, the Integrity Management Unit, was born. This is considered the first phase for establishing the Integrity Program in public bodies and entities with powers to:

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UGIS' JURISDICTIONS

1. Coordination of structuring, execution, and monitoring of the Integrity Program.

2. Guidance and training of employees regarding topics related to the Integrity Program.

3. Promotion of other actions related to the implementation of the Integrity Program, together with other units of the body or entity.

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Since the Ordinance was issued, public bodies in the Federal Government were recommended to stablish the UGI within the scope of the Special Advisory for Internal Control (AECIs), which is already committed to upholding integrity. As for public entities, UGIs were recommended be set up in a transversal area, with easier access to other units of the organization.

Just to make the difference between public bodies and public entities clear, let's look at the concepts below:

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That said, the Brazilian Office of the Comptroller General (CGU) had already created a Public Integrity Panel, with the purpose of providing transparency to the evolution of integrity programs in the federal public service. However, it was only in May 2021 that the CGU gave it a new look and advanced filtering features into a kind of online dashboard, migrating from a Qlikview platform to the Microsoft Power BI platform. In this way, making information available in a visual and interactive way to users, accessing data located in the cloud, was made possible.

Below is the format of the aforementioned Public Integrity Panel:

Certainly, this was another step taken by the Brazilian government in the right direction, considerably contributing to the transparency of integrity programs implementation in Federal Government.

Despite some setbacks perceived in Brazil in its never-ending fight against bribery and corruption, such as the recent change to the official misconduct law that made punishment almost impossible, we should not end the year without citing good examples of the evolution of Brazilian Federal Government integrity.

Anyone interested in knowing a little more about the evolution of programs directed to Brazilian Federal Government integrity will have ample research material to delve deeper into this topic.