Africa-Press – Angola. A Territory Observatory laboratory, aimed at designing solutions to problems in the field of municipal public management in the country, should be implemented in the near future, announced this Friday, the Minister of Territory Administration, Dionísio Manuel da Fonseca.
This is a mechanism called “MATLAB”, in the technical maturity phase, resulting from a partnership between the Ministry of Territorial Administration and the Instituto Superior Politécnico de Benguela (ISPB), and should gradually engage other national universities.
Speaking in the ISPB auditorium, after a consultation meeting and contributions to the institutionalization of this initiative, minister Dionísio Manuel da Fonseca justified the idea of creating a laboratory for experimenting with ideas for good municipal management practices, with the need to look at the citizen as the target audience for governance.
For the holder of the Territorial Administration portfolio, there are many challenges in the area of governance, that is, social and economic problems, the resolution of which should not be the sole and exclusive responsibility of the State.
Therefore, Dionísio Manuel da Fonseca thinks that the State should continue to form this partnership with higher education institutions, including civil society organizations and secondary schools, thus valuing students’ ideas.
“And with the institutionalization of the MAT experimentation ideas laboratory, we certainly want to follow this path”, he assured, while speaking to public managers and academics from the various branches of knowledge.
The idea, basically, he explained, is to open the Ministry of Territorial Administration to academics and, in particular, to social scientists and civil society, so that they can participate in the process of designing solutions to the countless problems in the field of municipal public management.
Therefore, he thanked the Instituto Superior Politécnico de Benguela for offering a degree course in Territorial Management, in order to develop scientific research in this field.
“We think that we are in a position to continue working so that our joint effort is crowned with success”, he emphasized, recognizing, however, that some MAT projects coincide and harmonize with some ISPB actions, which contribute to improving the effectiveness of government action.
Without announcing dates, Dionísio Manuel da Fonseca guarantees that he will move forward with the implementation of the MAT laboratory, an initiative that will follow several phases and is embraced by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) as a financier, within the framework of the Development Objectives Sustainable (SDG).
On the other hand, he urged experts to contribute with their knowledge, to design a project that is analyzed with sufficient objectivity and scientificity, and without any political connotation.
Regarding reflections on the ranking of municipalities, the minister said that the Government took on the challenge of rewarding municipalities with the aim of promoting more effective local public governance that has a greater impact on the lives of citizens.
“We want to recognize merit, share ideas, success stories that we can identify in the most varied municipalities in our country, but always with the emphasis on recognizing effective, efficient and quality action in municipal public management”, he concluded.
When presenting the ISPB’s technical opinion on the regulations for the Best Municipality of Angola Award (PMMA), engineering and management specialist in decision analysis Amaro Segunda Ricardo suggested, among others, the classification of municipalities into categories, depending on their performance be high, medium and low, within the framework of achieving the SDGs.
As for potential criteria, the professor also listed the availability and regularity of data, transversality, transparency, independence and non-arbitrariness.
The deputy provincial governor of Benguela for the Political, Social and Economic sector, Lídia Amaro, and the president of ISPB, Antero Moisés Nunguno, attended the session, as did other senior staff from the Ministerial Department that oversees the Administration of the Territory.
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