No. 64 (2013): Buenas Prácticas en la Gestión Pública

In more than a decade of implementing State reforms, some of the following aspects have become a matter of consensus in the Central American Isthmus: (a) the strengthening of public sector institutionality; (b) the improvement of public organizations and service quality; (c) the optimization of public spending; (d) higher levels of accountability on the part of the public sector; (e) increased citizen participation in public management and in general; (f) the need to better reconcile the market and the State; and (g) the adaptation of the public sector and the administrative apparatus to meet new demands.

The lessons learned in this modernization process in the area of public management indicate that the greatest difficulties in achieving success in the aforementioned initiatives lie in how to do, rather than in what to do, particularly due to the practical aspects of public management, with a growing interest in the exchange of successful experiences, also known as "good practices". 

A good governmental practice is an experience, an activity, a process that has been successfully carried out by a public entity. It is characterized by: a) having had measurable, concrete and systematized results; b) these results have benefited the population; and c) it is replicable, awakening the interest of decision-makers to access proven experiences, given their orientation towards concrete and effective solutions.

In Central America in particular, there is the dissemination of good practices in public management, based on the competitions undertaken by public administrations in the areas of quality and public service, recognized and disseminated experiences that promote replicability, enabling the improvement of performance and a favorable environment for public administration.

Examples of these good practices are increasingly accessible and constitute references for continuous improvement and modernization of public administration, especially in some areas such as: quality in public services (education, health, etc.), user services, citizen complaint mechanisms, etc., and others such as performance indicators, evaluation, institutional planning, etc. 

ICAP in this process of disseminating the development of certain processes or applications that have given good results, showing their relevance in the public management of the countries of Central America, Panama and the Dominican Republic, generates this issue of the Central American Journal of Public Administration, dedicated to the topic of Good Practices in Public Management.