DEVELOPMENT-BRAZIL: A Pioneer in Municipal Development

By Mario Osava Reprint | | Print |

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, May 15 2000 (IPS) - Forty years ago the city government of Porto Alegre, the capital of the state of Rio Grande do Sul, became the first Brazilian municipality to have a computer, after it consulted the Brazilian Institute of Municipal Administration (IBAM), which helped finance the purchase.

“It was a huge apparatus, three metres long and one metre high, with thousands of valves, for tasks that any laptop computer carries out much better today,” said Diogo Lordello de Mello, IBAM director at the time, who advised the Porto Alegre mayor’s office to go ahead with the purchase.

Today, virtually all city governments in Brazil work with computers.

Besides expediting delivery of services and improving local administration, computers have also become a means of connection and communication with the public and between municipalities, fuelling information-sharing and boosting the transparency of local governments – and democracy as a whole, Lordello de Mello pointed out.

In 50 years, the number of municipalities in Brazil has grown threefold, to just over 5,500 by late 1999, due to population growth and political and administrative decentralisation.

IBAM has accompanied and fomented that process since its founding in 1952 by a movement seeking stronger local government and decentralisation. The technical, non-governmental institution is not affiliated with any specific political party, and supports local administrations, putting an emphasis on technical training and assistance.

Lordello de Mello, a lawyer and former air force officer with a graduate degree in public administration, was the driving force behind the initiative, and the institution’s headquarters in Rio de Janeiro, built in 1971, carries his name. After heading IBAM from 1956 to 1986, Lordello de Mello took charge of the institution’s international affairs.

IBAM’s success as a pioneer in Latin America in providing technical assistance to municipal governments has brought it international recognition. In 1988, Lordello de Mello flew to Canada to share the institute’s experience with the Metropolitan Council of Toronto, which was setting up its own Urban Institute.

IBAM provides advice, directly to local governments or in conjunction with national governments in Latin America and other regions, on technical training initiatives for municipal governments, said Jamil Reston, superintendent of Promotion of the Municipality and Citizenship.

IBAM has provided important assistance to Colombia, Mozambique, Nicaragua, Panama, Peru and Portugal, said Reston.

Brazil’s municipalities are stronger than those of any other country in Latin America, said Lordello de Mello, who pointed to the increased autonomy won by local governments since the passage of Brazil’s first democratic constitution in 1891.

Although that autonomy suffered setbacks in the constitutions passed by military dictatorships in 1937 and 1967, the constitution enacted in 1988 represented “an enormous step, a leap,” he said.

In some cases, municipal legislation even takes precedence over state and national laws, he added.

But there are continuing problems of overlapping competence between municipal, state and national governments, and of unclear division of duties and responsibilities, which lead to conflicts as well as a duplication of efforts and resultant squandering of resources, said Lordello de Mello.

The 1988 constitution increased both the funding and responsibilities of local governments, which continue, however, to be strapped for cash.

Meanwhile, Reston said it was difficult to keep up with the explosion of new municipalities and the increase in their power and continued technological advances, which have generated a growing demand for human resources development, training, technical support and a variety of services.

IBAM’s legal advice service has particularly felt the pressure. Last year it received and responded to 7,007 consultations from mayor’s offices and city councils of affiliated municipalities: 4,783 by telephone, 2,132 written requests – by “snail mail” or e-mail – and 92 visits in person.

IBAM’s National School for Urban Services gave 57 courses last year on a variety of subjects like financial administration, evaluation of human resources and urban development, to more than 1,200 city government officials, town council members or employees of development banks or other public institutions.

The courses are given on-site. For example, 140 officials at the Minas Gerais Development Bank took a course in Belo Horizonte, the capital of the eastern state of Minas Gerais.

IBAM has also been developing a Distance Teaching Programme since 1997. So far only courses on legislation and budgets are offered.

But of the more than 2,000 students who took the courses in 1999, only 724 graduated. One reason for the high rate of failure to complete or pass the courses is problems with mail delivery, with tests sent in by students getting lost or delayed. The idea is that with the use of the Internet and interactive communication, results will improve thanks to closer contact between the students and instructors.

Publications are another tool aimed at improving municipal administration. The magazine ‘Municipalities’, with a circulation of 15,000, is distributed to senior city government officials, town council members and institutions linked to local governments, such as universities and financial entities.

Vicente de Paula Loureiro, secretary of urban development and the environment in Nueva Iguazú, a municipality in the metropolitan area of Rio de Janeiro, is a frequent user of IBAM services, and has taken a number of its courses throughout his 20- year career as a town planning official in various city governments in the state of Rio de Janeiro.

Loureiro described IBAM as “an essential point of reference, as it compensates for many of the shortcomings of municipal governments in Brazil, which are facing a growing demand for services at a time when the public sector is in crisis.”

Besides the courses and advice and research to which it has access as an affiliated municipality, Nueva Iguazú has contracted IBAM to advise the mayor’s office regarding the process in which a local district, Mesquita, is breaking off as an autonomous municipality on the decision of its residents.

“Our municipality has already suffered serious losses with previous break-offs, and is now trying to prevent them with the help of IBAM experts,” said Loureiro.

The official said he hoped to see an expansion of IBAM’s role, as a centre for graduate-level studies and a permanent forum for debate on issues affecting municipalities, and as a certifier of successful experiments in local administration.