GOVERNMENT

PECTRA Technology collaborates with regional governments in making their organizational processes more efficient. This helps them to increase productivity, notable reduce unproductive time, improve organizational information provided to citizen, offering up-to-date information on-line and increasing citizen perception on management quality.
Currently we are working with important organizations in the entire region, among which are: Comisión Nacional del Agua (Mexico), Gobierno del Estado de Hidalgo (Mexico) and Dirección Nacional de Aduanas (Paraguay).

Business case


The Comisión Nacional del Agua (CONAGUA) is the organization responsible for managing and conserving national waters in the United Mexican States. The organization, with the solid objective of making their management transparent and complying with two important laws (Public Works and Related Service Law and the Federal Law for Transparency and Access to Public Governmental Information), implemented an efficient management system (PECTRA BPM Suite) that allowed them to win two national transparency awards and improve citizens’ perception by around 80%.


Challenges


The Comisión Nacional del Agua faced a difficult project through which they digitalized the entire “Public Works – Hydro agricultural Infrastructure Management and Development” project with the objective of positively transforming the variable that defined the situation the institution faced:
• Lack of transparency in management
• The demand to comply with transparency laws and “Good Government” practices:
- Public Works and Related Services Law (2000).
- Federal Transparency and Access to Public Governmental Information Law (2002)
• Manual processes, management inefficiency:
- Reports based on estimated information, making the reconciliation difficult by being partial and diverse.
- Incongruence in physical and financial advances of public Works, without reports regarding the destination of the resources.
- Transmission of imprecise information that increased management costs.


Solution


A strategy was developed under the Business Process Management concept that would allow the computerization, integration and digitalization of the information from multiple applications and manual procedures, achieving:
• Providing public access to the information to guarantee that the citizens can exercise their rights.
• Reducing operating costs and down times, increasing management efficiency.
• Increasing the control of operation by internal and external agents.
• Coordinating and centralizing procedures and tasks between central offices, regional and state managers and operating personnel from 22 technified rainfed districts.

During this, the development of the Hydro agricultural Management System, based on the PECTRA BPM Suite solution, had the objective of standardizing and controlling the execution of public resource budgetary management processes through:
• Integration and automation of programming, budgetary, contracting, tracking and federal hydro agricultural infrastructure investment project end activities from 22 Technified Rainfed Districts (DTT) in the country, under the Process Management logic.
• Development of Transparency Portal: information system available online, in real time and transparently for public reference.
This implies a radical transformation in the methods to precisely track the use of the federal government’s public resources and is based on the systematization of a general process of three stages:
• Program and budget.
• Supervise.
• Close contracts.

Results


As a result of this implementation, the Comisión Nacional del Agua was awarded an Honorable Mention at the Annual Transparency Awards 2005 organized by the National Institute for Public Administration and the Secretary of Internal Affairs. Furthermore, that same year they obtained the Innova recognition from President Vicente Fox Quesada which is stimulus for successful innovative practices. It was instituted by the 2000-2006 administration for considering that the system has a favorable impact on the six strategies of good government. Additionally, the Department of Internal Affairs included the system within its good practices list regarding regulatory improvements that can be replicated in other governmental institutions.
Substantial changes in the citizens’ perception and in the efficiency of the organization’s operations took place after the implementation of the solution:
• Increase in the favorable perception of external users.
• Reduction in the unconformities in tender procedures according to surveys of citizens who participated.
• Reduction of the Internal Control Organization’s observations of contracting procedures.
• Reduction in administrative tasks.
• Increase in management transparency.
• Reduction in operating costs.
• Reduction in down times.
• Increase in management efficiency.

The exponential increase in effectiveness when it comes to satisfying the needs of the citizens together with a substantial improvement in management efficiency and budgetary control make this implementation a paradigm of how technology can contribute to common good in contexts where the lack of governmental transparency reigns, as well as a call from the people to change the situation.

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