Senda de Integridad Received the Interamerican Award for Effective Public Innovation
Senda de Integridad, a project led by Patricia Rincón Mazo (ILG 2017), District Undersecretary for Institutional Strengthening of the Mayor's Office of Bogotá, received an Honorable Mention in the category of "Innovation in the Use of Evidence from Behavioral Sciences" from the 10th Edition of the Inter-American Award for Innovation for Effective Public Management 2022 (PIGEP) of the Organization of American States (OAS).
The main objective of the "Inter-American Award for Innovation for Effective Public Management" is to recognize, encourage, systematize, and promote innovations in public management that are carried out in the region in order to contribute to transparency, efficiency, and implementation of mechanisms for citizen participation in public institutions. In the X edition, a total of 48 innovative experiences from 9 countries in the region were received during the application process, of which 17 were pre-selected upon meeting the requirements of the application. The evaluating jury was made up of the OAS Secretary for Hemispheric Affairs, the Director of the Department for Effective Public Management and distinguished academics, representatives of institutions and personalities recognized for their trajectory in public management.
Patricia came to Georgetown University's Innovation and Leadership in Government (ILG) program in search of knowledge about the design and implementation process for innovative projects, after a new challenge had been assigned to her as Vice President of Finance at Icetex, a State entity that grants educational loans to promote higher education in the country. Thanks to the ILG programme, Patricia understands the need to promote innovation in the public sector, but is also aware of the obstacles that public servants face to promote this change and with this she begins to reflect on how this change can be achieved.
“I am beginning to understand that the path of innovation is to think of new ways to approach the public sector, and to think about the need for a paradigm shift” - Patricia Rincon, ILG 2017.
The “Open Innovation” class given by Silverio Zebral, a professor at the OAS School of Government, motivated her to think outside the box, a concept that was key to her future projects. She also remembers McCourt School of Public Policy Professor Chloe Schwenke's class “Ethics, Values, and Public Policy”, where she realized how culture and beliefs are often used as an “excuse” for resisting change and not allowing ethics to advance in the public sector.
Since she came to Bogotá's administration, she has always promoted innovation within the organization and Senda de Integridad is a sign of her determination to generate change through innovative processes. It was this determination to generate that change that led her to promote the "Public Leadership and Innovation Program for the Bogota Mayor's Office", designed and implemented by LALP to virtually train public officials of the Mayor's Office on innovation, management and leadership development in order to equip them with tools and frameworks for action to address local challenges and needs in the Colombian context.
Senda de Integridad promotes the appropriation of the integrity code in district entities. Through a voluntary space that presents challenges designed with gamification principles and theory of change to overcome, transparency and integrity are encouraged to prevent corruption. The project uses the hiking narrative as a metaphor to communicate a message about how the path to integrity and transparency is not easy and does not show results immediately. It is a long process and requires individual and then group change. The initiative was born with the conviction that the commitment of public servants is required to improve public ethics and thus improve the response that public entities give to the needs of their citizens. Patricia and her team saw a dissonance in public management practice. With the polarization of public processes in the country, the focus of politicians had been shifting away from achieving general well-being to concentrating on access to power.
“In Colombia we have lost the dividing line between public management and electoral processes" - Patricia Rincon, ILG 2017
Thus, Senda de Integridad was proposed, to move people and create an organizational cultural change through interactive methods, showing more effectiveness than forcing them to memorize or read the integrity code. The global launch of the project proposed 4 different challenges to public entities per year to be completed in six months with the aim of questioning them about their responsibility as public servants and connecting them with the citizens by creating validated feedback channels.
Implemented for the first time in 2020, Senda de Integridad had the participation of 51 public entities, activating more than 700 integrity managers and 8,000 public collaborators. For this first edition, 4 challenges were presented within the plain route (the appropriation of accountability as a dialogue mechanism for social control, training in a culture of integrity, the use and exploitation of open data and the documentation of good practices) . In 2021, participation rose to 1,400 integrity managers with more than 20,000 public servants, representing 31.5% of the district's workers. This time, 4 new challenges were presented on the mountain route (the elaboration of behavior agreements based on the Integrity Code, campaigns for the appropriation of the public for servants and citizens, preventive management of conflicts of interest and visibility to the commitment manager with the fight against corruption). The program was also carried out in 2022, and to date 45 of the 60 district entities and 30,000 of the 60,000 public servants have participated, as well as 4,000 citizens.
This year the last edition of Senda will take place due to the change of administration and will focus on generating reflection on how it has transformed each entity and citizens. However, Patricia and her team are confident that the new administration can include Senda's good practices and lessons learned in another project, having been included in the Integrity Policy, the district's long-term public policy guide. Senda is an initiative that shows how the fight against corruption is possible.
“It is gratifying to show people that the fight against corruption is not only with prison but also with preventive processes” - Patricia Rincon, ILG 2017
The impact of Senda de Integridad goes beyond the district, being replicable in other local, national and international entities. In this sense, the Transparency Secretariat of the Presidency of the Republic of Colombia invited Patricia and her team to participate in a dialogue table with other municipalities to present this innovative model of change that uses games and recreational activities to teach in a different way. and provide new ways to relate to citizens.
"In this way, specific and simple actions are allowed at a low cost, generating a change with great effectiveness" - Patricia Rincon, ILG 2017
The PIGEP honorable mention is of great significance for Patricia and her team at the Bogotá mayor's office, and serves as an example for other entities since the recognition of a local project by an international validator shows that one can think outside the box to change public administration.
"Many times we do not measure the impact we make, this award is valid internationally from a local government process" - Patricia Rincon, ILG 2017
Congratulations, Patricia! Senda de Integridad is an example of the impact multiplier effect that promotes ILG's mission.