Benguela – A Territory Observatory and laboratory aimed at designing solutions to problems in the field of municipal public management across the country will be implemented in the near future.
The minister of Territory Administration, Dionísio Manuel da Fonseca said on Friday that this is a mechanism called “MATLAB”, in the technical maturity phase, resulting from a partnership between his office and the Higher Polytechnic Institute of Benguela, and should gradually engage other national universities.
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.
He added that there are many challenges in the area of governance, such as social and economic problems that should not be the of sole and exclusive State responsibility.
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.
He explained that the idea 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.
For this reason, he thanked the Higher Polytechnic Institute of 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 actions of the Higher Polytechnic Institute of Benguela, 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 some 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 technical opinion of the Higher Polytechnic Institute of Benguela on the regulation of the Best Municipality of Angola Award (PMMA), the specialist in engineering and management in the decision analysis, Amaro Segunda Ricardo, suggested, among others, the classification of municipalities by categories, according to their performance is high, medium and low, in the framework of the achievement of 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.
JH/CRB/TED/DOJ
