The document discusses the need for network organizational structure of the state in Brazil to make it more efficient and effective. It argues that the current structure is incompatible with modern needs and prevents integrated efforts across different levels of government. The proposed network structure would have the federal government at the center, coordinating actions between state and local governments, state enterprises, regional development agencies, and civil society. This integrated structure relying on information sharing could better promote simultaneous economic and social progress across Brazil.

1. NETWORK STRUCTURE OF THE STATE TO BECOME EFFICIENT AND
EFFECTIVE IN BRAZIL
Fernando Alcoforado*
1.
The imperative of state and public administration reform in Brazil
The government or a company will succeed in implementing their strategies only if the
resources and the organizational structure made available for their execution are
compatible. Besides lacking today a national development strategy that contributes to
permit simultaneous economic and social progress of the nation, Brazil does not allocate
the resources that would be necessary for their development, considering that allocate
50 % of the budget of federal government to payment of the service of domestic and
foreign debt at the expense of investments in economic and social infrastructure and an
hypertrophied organizational structure with the existence of excessive public bodies and
staff many of them unnecessary.
It is imperative to a profound state reform in Brazil at all levels (federal, state and
municipal) because the crisis facing the country at the moment and that tends to worsen
in the near future is to require it to perform effectively and effectiveness of their
constitutional duties targeting the simultaneous economic and social progress of the
nation. Much of the inefficiency and ineffectiveness assigned to the State in Brazil is
due to the lack of integration of federal, state and municipal governments in promoting
national development. Join this fact, the existence of inadequate organizational
structures in each of the federal, state and municipal levels that prevent integrative effort
in these bodies of government. The lack of integration of the various levels of the state
is, therefore, making the total action of the government becomes chaotic as a whole
generating therefore diseconomies of all kinds.
The organizational structures of government at all levels in Brazil are incompatible with
current needs. It is unacceptable that structures of federal, state and local government
perform the same actions in parallel, as still happens today in many sectors, exhausting
the meager resources at their disposal. To solve this problem, it would be necessary to
make the federal and state governments to assume regulatory and global, regional and
sectoral planning in integrated basis functions, while the municipal authorities, regional
development agencies and state enterprises would make executive part also pivotally.
Therefore compete to municipal governments, the regional development agencies and
state enterprises a great responsibility to put into practice all the plans for the overall
development, regional, state, local and sectoral jointly prepared by various government
bodies after listening parliaments in its federal, state and municipal levels, as well as
civil society.
The new model of integrated management of the public sector in Brazil would be
opposite to what prevails today in which federal, state and local governments are
autonomous in their decisions and actions and politically responsive to the idea of
integration. The major instruments for implementing the plans for national, regional,
local and sectoral development would be the municipalities within each county, state
enterprises in the economic sector and regional development agencies in the integration
efforts of municipalities and state enterprises in implementing programs and projects for
economic and social development.
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2. Changes in organizational structures and the use of methods of administrative
rationalization with the widespread use of information technology will make
productivity levels are high in the State for providing its services to the Brazilian
society. The implementation of a model of efficient and effective management to the
Brazilian State will make its tax collection capacity be expanded. Corruption and tax
evasion, found today in Brazil are largely due to the inefficiency of the administrative
machinery of the state. The new management model based on the rationalization of
work processes will inevitably lead to reduced costs of operation of the State and,
consequently, the tax burden on taxpayers.
To accomplish a revolution in work processes, it is essential, however, to recycle across
the civil service, change all of today's dominant culture in the state apparatus and adopt
a policy of remuneration compatible with their new responsibilities. As for state
enterprises, it is necessary that the relationship between its leaders and the bodies to
which they report is based on management contracts. Through these agreements, the
companies would get state relative autonomy from the state and assume the
commitment to pursue preset goals of efficiency and effectiveness. Without putting in
place a package of measures described above and Brazilian State will not recover the
integrity of its ability to regulate the economic system, to invest in the expansion of the
economy and adopt social compensation policies to mitigate the negative effects of the
process of capital accumulation in Brazil. Instead of facilitating the minimal state
advocated by supporters of neoliberalism, we must instead restructure the state to make
it efficient and effective in Brazil.
What is proposed, in short, is to implement an network organizational structure of the
state in Brazil in order to in every county and region of the country there is a
coordinated and integrated federal, state and municipal governments share with the
effective participation of civil society of each municipality and each region. Rethinking
state reform in Brazil, therefore, requires a break with the still dominant Brazil
paradigm that focuses the role of technocrats in government management at the expense
of the manifestation of civil society sectors. Not just more and more concentration of
technical power, as occurs today. It´s necessary take into account the political
dimension of state reform, including the participation of civil society sectors through
public hearings, plebiscites and referenda in decision making on the most relevant
issues. The emphasis on policy requires fundamentally strengthening the connections
between the state and society and representative institutions also expanding collection
procedures and accountability, the means of external social control, transparency and
publicity of government action.
With the organizational structure of the network state in Brazil it´s possible to maximize
the development of their current and potential economic poles and enjoy the
endogenous development potential of each locality and each region of the country. The
federal government should provide management systems to coordinate in conjunction
with state government and local government actions in areas covered by the poles of
growth and development of the national economy, especially in areas and development
axes (Figure 1). In each development axis and location should exist structures for
regional development and there should be a joint effort between the three spheres of
government, economic forces and civil society in promoting economic and social
development.
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3. Figure 1 - National Integration and Development Axes
Source : Brazilian Government - Brazil in Action
2 . The network organizational structure necessary to Brazil
The Network Structure, or Organization Network, is a type of organizational
macrostructure which operates according to logic of organization chart circular or starshaped, the center of which is the main organization that, in this case, would be the
federal government. Around this main organization were several other entities (state and
local governments, state enterprise, regional development agencies and civil society
representatives). The operation of this type of organization would rely on modern
information and telecommunication systems that enable the centralized management
and control of all processes. A network structure also corresponds to what its name
suggests, ie its members bind vertically and horizontally to all others, directly or
through surrounding them. The resulting set is like a mesh of multiple threads, which
can spread indefinitely in all directions.
The basic links that give consistency to a network is the information transiting through
channels that interconnect its various organs. In networks, information is distributed and
published for all to have access to it. The free flow of information, ie, the free horizontal
intercom thus becomes an essential requirement for the proper functioning of a network.
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4. All members must have access to all the information circulating, the channels that
interconnect them in it. There can be no single or reserved circuits, so that canals that
eventually block that do not impede the flow of information in a free and multiple. In a
network structure, each organization that her part is responsible for its effects on the
realization of the set goals.
The democratic functioning of a network organization is measured by the real freedom
of movement of information inside and therefore the absence of censorship, control,
hierarchies or manipulation in this movement. You could say that networks are
structures that were becoming increasingly possible with technological progress: from
the mail and telegraph to the airplane, the radio, the telephone, the fax and the means of
mass communication, the world has become a immense network with fewer barriers to
the free circulation of information. The current possibilities offered by computer - the
speed of communication and storage of information - can give an extreme effectiveness
with specific goals established networks, as well as provide them effectively
unrestricted movement of information.
Who is associated with a network to instrumentalize it with personal, group or partisan
goals, soon realize that this space will not be suitable because it does not contain any
"power" to be taken given that the "power" in a network belongs to all its members. The
network is the "power set" of all its members, and is only effective if not exactly able to
focus on any particular member, ie, if all its members are willing to "give" information
to the other. A network structure can interconnect both people as entities. The persons
and / or entities connected in a network can be the same or completely heterogeneous.
Everything depends solely of the goals that the network aims to achieve.
A network organization can only be free and conscious participation of its members. If
such participation does not exist, the network is not consolidated nor remains tending
gradually to discard. Conversely, if a network is "assumed" by a growing number of its
members who put in the service of achieving its goals their capacity for initiative and
action, it deepens and strengthens increasingly. A network will not move because a
voice command mobilized. A network moves when each and every one of its members
start on their own decision to move. A network is like a body, ie, all its members to
make it work, all are the network, with each other in their connections. The assumed
free and conscious of that undertaking collective action participation will be increased
as three basic conditions are met:
•
•
•
The achievement of the objective pursued is vital for those who join in the action
The goal can only be achieved if there is effective participation
The network is accepted as legitimate by participants of the action
*
Alcoforado, Fernando, engineer and doctor of Territorial Planning and Regional Development from the
University of Barcelona, a university professor and consultant in strategic planning, business planning,
regional planning and planning of energy systems, is the author of Globalização (Editora Nobel, São
Paulo, 1997), De Collor a FHC- O Brasil e a Nova (Des)ordem Mundial (Editora Nobel, São Paulo,
1998), Um Projeto para o Brasil (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 2000), Os condicionantes do
desenvolvimento do Estado da Bahia (Tese de doutorado. Universidade de Barcelona,
http://www.tesisenred.net/handle/10803/1944, 2003), Globalização e Desenvolvimento (Editora Nobel,
São Paulo, 2006), Bahia- Desenvolvimento do Século XVI ao Século XX e Objetivos Estratégicos na Era
Contemporânea (EGBA, Salvador, 2008), The Necessary Conditions of the Economic and Social
Development-The Case of the State of Bahia (VDM Verlag Dr. Muller Aktiengesellschaft & Co. KG,
Saarbrücken, Germany, 2010), Aquecimento Global e Catástrofe Planetária (P&A Gráfica e Editora,
Salvador, 2010), Amazônia Sustentável- Para o progresso do Brasil e combate ao aquecimento global
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5. (Viena- Editora e Gráfica, Santa Cruz do Rio Pardo, São Paulo, 2011) and Os Fatores Condicionantes do
Desenvolvimento Econômico e Social (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2012), among others.
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