Dec 17, 2015
Those Who Can Do Teach: Sao Paolo is embarking on an ambitious experiment to have its citizens educate its public employees
with Maria Paz Hermosilla
This is the expanded version of a piece published December 17, 2015 in Governing.com
An open government is one that is transparent, participatory, and collaborative. But moving from traditional government operating behind closed doors to more open institutions, where civil servants work together with citizens to create policies and solve problems, demands new skills and sensibilities.
As more and more public-sector leaders embrace the concept of openness as a positive force for governmental effectiveness, they would do well to look toward Brazil’s capital city, where an unusual experiment was just launched: an effort to ask the public to train Sao Paulo’s 150,000 civil servants, especially in skills relating to technology and innovation. It’s described as the world’s largest open-government training program.
The program, known as Agents of Open Government — part of a wider city initiative called Sao Paulo Aberta (Open Sao Paulo) — aims to teach through peer-to-peer learning, where government employees learn from citizens. Twenty-four citizen-led courses that began last month are aimed not only at government employees and elected community representatives but also at social activists and the general population.
Sao Paulo is betting on the radical notion that learning can happen outside of formal civil-service training colleges. This initiative reflects a growing global trend toward recognizing that institutions can become smarter — more effective and efficient — by making use of the skills and experience of those outside of government.
Officials hope to have 25,000 participants over the course of the coming year. To encourage public employees’ participation, city workers who attend the courses gain credits in the municipal evaluation system that allow them to get pay raises.
An Open Call for Citizen Teachers
Any of Sao Paulo’s 11 million residents is eligible to apply to be an “open government agent” and provide training in any of four subject areas: Open and collaborative technology; transparency and open data; networked communication; and mapping and collaborative management.
The only requirement is that a would-be trainer commit to offering the course 10 hours per month for six months for 40 people per class. Since only half of Brazil’s population has Internet access, the training is done in person. The city offered the spaces for training (such as libraries, schools and cultural centers) and trainers receive a stipend of 1,000 brazilian reals a month (about $270 USD).
For the initial courses, Sao Paulo ’s Open Government Committee received 200 applications and selected 48 of them to be trainers. They come from a variety of backgrounds: 42 percent are women and 40 percent are minorities. The journalist and writer Martha Lopes is teaching a course titled “Gender and Power — Rebuilding Communication in Networks”. Wellington Da Silva, a technologist and MBA, is teaching “Introduction to Programming Logic Applied to Open Government”. And the video producer Osvaldo Santana is teaching “Multimedia Creation and Dissemination”. Other courses encompass subjects from “cultural cartography” to marketing through social networks to hacker activism.
The Agents of Open Government program is intended to accelerate the acquisition of 21st century skills for governing. According to Gustavo Vidigal, Deputy Secretary of International and Federative Affairs and Laila Bellix, Program Coordinator at Sao Paulo City Hall, whom GovLab interviewed during the Open Government Partnership Global Summit in Mexico City on October 29, the program addressed demand for open government within public agencies that could not be met with traditional training.
Organizers explained that, at least in the program’s first phase, they didn’t want government to define the formats and specific subjects but wanted to tap into what citizens were already doing in the city. They did offer selected teachers training regarding their activities and content. It remains to be seen whether in future iterations the city will do more to curate particular subjects and how it might go beyond the “open call” approach to enlisting trainers to target those with specific know-how.
What also remains to be seen is whether and how these citizen courses ultimately change how Sao Paulo governs, makes policies and solves problems, and whether participants are better able to serve the public. But initially, quantitative evaluation for the program will include the number of workshops and classes, and attendees. In the first month of the program in November, the City filled around 50% of the seats in the program but now is filling 75%. Qualitative evaluation will involve talking to agents and to participants. Additionally, each course has specific results or products they are working on, such as platforms or campaigns. At a minimum, the organizer’s goal — one they seem on the way to achieving — is that more civil servants are exposed to the topics of open government, which could in itself contribute to their effectiveness in governing.
