Placing people at the center of Public Administration is more than a nice slogan. It is a profound transformation, which begins far from the counters and digital portals, requiring courage to change the back office of the State. What interests citizens is not how many organizations there are, but whether their problems are resolved in a simple way, without redundancies, without bureaucratic labyrinths and without the obligation to be the link between services that do not collaborate.
The biggest obstacle continues to be institutional fragmentation. Each ministry, general directorate or institute protects its territory, stores its data and builds its systems as if they were isolated fortresses. The PRR, which could have been a catalyst for change, in many cases ended up worsening this trend. Instead of promoting transversal projects and shared solutions, it stimulated a race for funds, in which each organization sought to secure its share. The consequence was the multiplication of redundant platforms, the creation of incompatible solutions and the consolidation of old silos of power and vanity.
Thus, what should have been a simplification agenda became a succession of fragmented investments, more concerned with meeting execution schedules than responding to people’s life events. We continue to see citizens forced to provide the same information several times, despite the State already having it, and to go through digital corridors that only reproduce the difficulties of face-to-face service. Digitalization, instead of freeing people, runs the risk of making bureaucracy more sophisticated.
To reverse this path, we need much more than good intentions or rhetoric about digital inclusion and omnichannel. These dimensions are crucial, but they do not solve the underlying problem. It’s in back office that everything is decided and that is where processes must be dematerialized, disintermediate flows and ensure that information circulates safely and reliably between organizations. Interoperability is not a technical detail, it is the condition for the State to function as a single entity and not as an archipelago of isolated systems.
And here we come to the question of leadership. Portugal doesn’t just need more technology, it needs strong digital governance, with authority and vision. The government opted for an easier CTO approach, focused on purchasing more equipment and solutions, limiting itself to managing projects and investments. What we need is a CIO logic, with someone who thinks strategically about information, who defines common data and process standards, who guarantees interoperability and who imposes a single, transversal architecture across the State.
This is the true meaning of putting people at the center, it is not filling the front office of portals, but transform the invisible gear that supports each service. A State that functions in an integrated manner, that shares data responsibly and that eliminates redundancies is a State that frees up time, energy and confidence for citizens. The PRR could still be part of that solution, if it were refocused on common platforms, shared infrastructures and metrics with real impact on people’s lives. But to do this, leadership is needed.
Without this change, we risk transforming the PRR into a lost opportunity, with a lot of investment in technology and little visible change in everyday life. With it, we can finally have a modern, fair and effective Public Administration, in which organizations cooperate instead of competing and in which the citizen is not a customer at counters, but the protagonist of a simple relationship with the State. To achieve this, more than ever, we need a CIO capable of refocusing the entire public sector on the sole objective of serving the citizen.
E-governance specialist