Subject 3: Edgar Salcedo MA in Public Administration.


V. Suárez: We are at the Instituto Nacional de Administración Pública, it is 10:50 a. m. and we are with the economist and master in public management Edgar Salcedo, who has accepted willingly to answer this interview about President Fox’s organizational model and a comparison with the Weberian model. This instrument is appendix D of this study. Master, it is a pleasure to be with you.
 
E. Salcedo: All the way around Vicente the pleasure is for me. Thanks for the invitation.
 
V. Suárez: As you can see, the interview is divided in four sections, where the last one is quite interesting because it asks for an expert recommendation, but let us start going from minor to major. Section one is the “definition of the organizational federal model”, then we have, following the ideas of the organizational theory so that we can have a referential background for the study, the first question: Could you define the nature of the next group of characteristics in the organizational practice of the current federal government? Please try to describe it according to your experience and knowledge. They are eight but we are going to reunite them into three groups. The first group is related with human side of an organizational model. How do you consider or qualify this trio: leadership, motivations and communication?
 
E. Salcedo: It has some deficiencies, first, about leadership, when leading a structure as the one of the public federal administration, a strong leadership is required, but sensible to the pieces that integrate it, and that leadership has had many inconsistencies, including some ones related with the organizational communication, for examples, some of the main secretaries tried to participate in giving form to the Presidency policies but they all have different and opposite perspectives, including of course the leader himself. About the motivation category, they tried some sophisticated and refine techniques since the beginning, as trying to reunite some people with their families, to have special treatments with people as deep motivation and psychological sessions or reunions with specialist to receive training of motivation for work. This can even be seen in the person of the President himself and I don not know if this is the reason he has so many ups and downs. I would conclude the motivation; the communication and the leadership are not consistence in this organizational model.
 
V. Suárez: Other group we may have relates the concept of efficiency and the decision making process. How is the current government handling them?
 
E. Salcedo: I think there are al least two aspects we have to consider about the decision process and its relation with efficiency. This government since the beginning, tried to limit the public administration in three large sectors, by the way, their concept of public administration is given on the assumption of the budget definition and it only serves the economical development. I can see problems between the position of the presidency offices and the secretaries, they get themselves into contradiction and there are several examples. In the case of the energy subject, that was the first secretary that had problems, there was a problem among the president’s, the secretaries and the presidency offices declarations. In the PEMEX case, I believe we can see why the Monterrey Group tried some way to get the experience of the large companies they ran into a strategic public organization that is PEMEX. In this situation, we can find that the collective contract with the official collision was poorly carried out even though they had the support of the Secretaría de la Función Pública. This demonstrates decisions and administration are not the same for private organizations and public organizations since that was the speech of the President, to incorporate the experience of the private sector to the public sector to be much more efficient. I would close my idea saying, first, private companies have in industrialized countries financial and result monthly reports very concrete and specific. In México, these reports of the private companies are very inaccurate on purpose, trying to hide profits and to pay fewer taxes. In developed countries they were able to incorporate that experience. In México we have been trying to do it since the economic crises of the 80s but there are no results. That is why the efficiency and the decision – making process have not resulted in the expected products.
 
V. Suárez: Now, what about the globalization, the disturbances, agents, factors from the outside. What would you define the environment is being handled in this organizational model?
 
E. Salcedo: Here I will build a concrete idea. The government of President counts with the support of President George Bush. Since the times of President Zedillo we know there is a strong affinity between the Partido Revolucionario Institucional, PRI and the democrat party; and the Partido de Acción Nacional, PAN and the Republican Party to which President George Bush belongs. So, in the necessary transition, the main geographical – economical factor was the knowledge and affirmation coming from our northern neighbors. Of course during these years that support and political relationship has had several matters as for example: the reunion of the millennium in Monterrey, where Fox asked Fidel Castro not to say silly things against the USA and President Bush, in fact, he was asked to leave the reunion as soon as possible. Another example is when Fox gets his Secretary of the Exterior to seek for the presidency of the Organización de Estados Americanos, OEA. I mention these examples because there is no doubt about the influence of the United States government in the Mexican decision-making. In the global arena, México is fully integrated with the north side of the continent. About the south side, they see México in a different way than it is seen in the north; many times it is not considered as an integrated country with the south continent. Mexico wants to have links with Argentina, and Chile. In Central America the same situation takes place, they don not see México as a brother, all the way around they consider México follows the resolutions of the United States and about economics, the organizational model is tied to the Free Trade Agreement, NAFTA. The model is also open with the European and the Asian communities, nevertheless, maybe, because of our lack of experience México has not taken advantage of the agreements and relations, México is losing competitively, and this is notorious inside the results of the country. Beyond this, it is also important to say, México has historically a different vision that the North American one, this has been equalized slowly since the creation of the NAFTA, then 1994 becomes a point of departure of the economic history of México because of its insertion in the American and Canadian economies so it is good to make a reflection that México has to build very concrete agreements with the United States since we represent for them a strategic nation for the resources we can supply, instead of a back yard, we are a space of opportunities, an open space. Many other countries as China are taking advantage of the opportunities of trade with the United States but México has not taken advantage in the same way. 
 
V. Suárez: All right, we have left for closing this section the participation of people as employees, as public servants. How is this conception been handled for this government? How do directors see and treat their human resources? How is the proposal of the INTRAGOB model been applied on the human side in everyday life?
 
E. Salcedo: First of all they insert it in a very tight scheme and as a wrong instrument. We have to understand the former scheme. For example if we have one million and three hundred thousand teachers with a secure employment and their union behind them with total control and support of the employment conditions, then we will find that more than half of the public servants will conserve their jobs no matter what. I am not talking just about the teachers, it also happens with the health service employees, the doctors, the nurses, and any one who has got a permanent contract, trabajadores de base. The problem with these workers is their low efficiency and it is reflected by all means, for example the indicators of the Monetary Fund related with governance. This also includes the lost of competitively because of those low rates of governance. México is behind countries like China and Argentina, of course we cannot compare with European countries. We have strong problems with the education and health systems, let us say, for the Europeans, we did not pass the exam and we all, are sick. For example, 25 millions of students, one quarter of the Mexican population, are not acquiring the abilities and knowledge education provides in some other countries, 90% of the Mexican students just reach the first three levels of the six one qualified by the OECD and it is obvious those levels of excellence are not enough to provide efficient public servants or human capital to face the challenges the country presents. Another point is the introduction of the INTRAGOB model where they tried to include the quality scheme of the ISO 9000 for the service area when the INTRAGOB model is created for industries. This aspect is making a lot of noise. I have hear the complains of many people, like doctors and teachers who do not understand the INTRAGOB proposal and the mentioned quality approach is totally unrelated to their functions; for a doctor, registered in the union and specialized in a medicine branch and making 25 thousand pesos a month and working just 6 hours a day at the ISSSTE the schemes of the quality and the INTRAGOB are models out of this world, they are not willing to study them or to use them even for the directors of those areas the same situation takes place. They question the model a lot and they may be right, the models are imposed and not understandable thus, the certification of the working processes and units with ISO 9000:2000 works in a way, the files are clean, they get new computers into the process, they modify the service but the real effects, in let us say 12 or 16 moths once the change has been applied, disappear. Because we are talking of model which refers to industries not to service organizations, here we have to revise and know if there are other alternatives. I am afraid there are other alternatives of quality systems for service organizations that we do not have in Mexico. So the public servants of this government see the system anarchy, inconsistent, erratic and they question it because they think it is rather rhetoric and the offerings of the government are barely achieved. 
 
 
V. Suárez: Thank you very much Édgar. Let us see the next section, where we make a comparison between the original model of the Bureaucracy by Max Weber and the post bureaucratic current model we have in the federal government. The first question is: Weber establishes the concepts of rationality and efficiency to conform the base of a bureaucratic model. Is it still so? Has it changed? Should a new goal exist for the bureaucratic establishment?
 
E. Salcedo: Yes, this an interesting question because with the Weberian model, this country built all its economical instruments, the budget was planned with laws that began to be applied in 1985; on these bases a great and manipulating State began to move to the future. But the concepts of efficiency that were introduced did not spread out because of the huge pyramidal structure to be covered. It is at the end of the 70 and the beginning of the 80 that these schemes are broken because of the financial crises and the incorporation of new management and bureaucratic models in Europe coming from the private sector and from clearer definitions of the functions of the public sector, for example for the health, energy and educative sectors; in fact if you compare the OECD countries´ and Mexico’s paradigms you will realize they are very different. Practically the only thing México did was to balance its finance to maintain the old paradigm, model that operated in the 80 and kept working in the 90 and until the end obligated for the agreements settled between the members of the OECD. Among others, Mexico had to change its programmatic structure since the fiscal crises continued but there was also external pressure, global pressures. And it was until 2004 that México began to use the budget based on results where the concept of efficiency is recovered under another focus. Mexico is really behind in the use of the current model, in fact, this government will not have time to see tangible results. The way we are informed, and the way they adjust the budget are only an organization of the finance, but there will not be answers of the public administration related with the search of efficiency, the results and the quality of results. It is a little what we will observe and I guess this will be a left assignment for the next government.
 
 
V. Suárez: Very good, independely of the ideas gives by you, the next questions says that if this would be the direction that is followed by the federal model. I may skip it because I feel it is already answered but… Do you want to add something about it? Do you think the belief that domination guides a bureaucracy to stability is still true?
 
E. Salcedo: When I read the question I thought for a while the implications, I think affirmatively. The domination is still guiding the process and unfortunately in Mexico the career services that have been instrumented which could give it a different focus have failed. This system has failed the Instituto Federal Electoral, IFE, at the Secretary of the Exterior, at the Secretary of the Treasure and some others. These failures have two reasons: Mexico is recovering very old models for this system, models used at the beginning of the XX century and they are models coming from other countries as England and when they are applied in Mexico the British concepts of domination did not find an echo in Mexico, all the contrary they created violent conflicts into the Mexican system like the one at the IFE. We have to be very careful about this, for example, a teacher that studies four to five years a career at the end gets a scholarship and we have one million, two hundred thousand teachers obtaining this scholarship and the result they get are rather poor or minimal and the main think is domination is a characteristic, this sector has had historically in the government life. Here is where we have to change the model and find different paradigms to break with this concept of domination.
 
V. Suárez: All right master, now…Is the current authority legal? Let us remember Weber sets the concept of obedience, domination and authority as his main analysis categories. In the new federal organizational model, is there a charismatic or legal authority?
 
E. Salcedo: I think we continue with the same old model of authority set by Weber. It has not been modified, maybe, because of the way of thinking of the Mexicans where the tlatuani authority still exists, the authority of a dictator, of the king, of an omnipotent president, it has not changed. Not only for the public administration, but also for the whole Mexican society, and I have to add this is very easy to find in the south east region and the center of the country. In the north because of the presence of the United States, I believe the problem takes a different connotation,
 
V. Suárez: This question gets into the fourth section. Which would be the concrete funds to build the structure of a bureaucracy that works in the XXI century?
 
E. Salcedo: I believe it would be based on a transformation of the economical side and to take it to very well studied management models; and to create public servants with experience and in a way they could deliver specific results in the middle range. Specific results as a school, an office to deliver driving licenses, a first level family health center: they have to understand the services they deliver ought to be quick, concrete and without generating disturbances to society, to organizations, to families; including in their actions and products a link with the quality schemes, and getting a chance to handle the budget based on results. This would be the obstacles to jump in the XXI century. About the candidates we have listened for 2006, two of them at least, have not taken this in consideration, they are Santiago Creel and Manuel López Obrador. In the Partido Revolucionario Institucional, PRI, they have conceptualized these ideas taking as appoint of departure their experiences in the state governments they have run.
 
V. Suárez: This is quite revealing. Weber thinks some concrete bases, some pillars should be the promotion based on efficiency, a specialized division of work, the use of state-of-the-art technology, the well known impersonality and of course, the conduct standards to construct an ideal type as he calls it. How would be the result of comparing your own experiences and beliefs with these principles? I know you already talk about the career civil service and concluded it is not useful, it is obsolete and it is also out of the space.
 
E. Salcedo: I believe I would recover the use of technology on the base on the informative paradigm. The public administration delivers some services, and many of then now through the use of technology, information technology, IT. These services may be less expensive, and more efficient. The problem resides in the big resistance to change, resistance to authorize the use of technology. I recover this issue to answer the question because in the moment that a working unit begins to use the IT tools, things change faster and transform and save a lot in the management and working procedures. There is an example of the famous clerks, which represent a healthy experience; they are called CIS, Centros Integrales de Servicios. [1]  When a user gets into a first level clinic, instead of going to his family doctor, gets into the CIS; when giving his or her name, he knows his date, his attending doctor, his files, his health history and what kind of worker he or she is, active, inactive, retires. This information is open and accessible any where in the health center. So the technology, allows the reduction of bureaucratic characteristics or customs as large, old files; people typing old and slow machines and so many others. In the educative services is fundamental the addition of IT, mainly Internet and I do recover this part, because the future is moving in this direction, my conclusion is… we still go to the old, civil registration offices to get a birth certificate and this costs us days of effort because information is not at hand; but in some small states and counties as Colima in some little but modern offices you type your ID number[2] and by paying ten pesos, the birth certificates are printed automatically. This could give us an idea of the discrepancies we have in the public administration.
 
V. Suárez: Thanks master Salcedo, now we talk about an evaluation, a qualitative evaluation of the same model but through the view of a systemic base, thinking about the bureaucratic model as a process. In fact, the presidential proposal is systemic, the INTRAGOB model is systemic but does it really function as a system that can balance itself when it is hit by disturbances? In your opinion, which would be the main internal and external disturbances that are colliding the organizational federal model?
 
E. Salcedo: The INTRAGOB model has a lot of details, of aspects but there is a problem to begin with, when the hierarchy gets into the operation with a law or a model, the INTRAGOB, for example, there is a fracture. That is why, when providing a driving license on the basis of an ISO 9000:2000, they say quality has been reached but corruption was not eliminated, then we may say it does not matter how systemic the process is; anyway it is still a fiasco. But even more delicate is the lack of focus, of direction, of “where to go”. A model like the INTRAGOB has to be oriented to results not to abstract quality, it is also lost in a world of government innovations, it tries to get into everything and finally changes nothing, it tries to cover the end but it did not define the beginning that is why it is rejected from the inside, and questioned from the outside.
 
V. Suárez: Are the devices or instruments for measure, evaluation and control working efficiently to know, explain, and describe the impact of those problems, of those disturbances and if possible predict and control them?
 
E. Salcedo: There is a ghetto in the country, in the country we have first generation indicators to measure the advance we have in the use of the budget, this means the indicators just talk about amounts and figures and relative relations, but they do not talk about the impact of a children’s vaccine program, we do not know if the program for uterine cancer detection is being effective. We cannot measure these results against just the measure of the budget. Therefore all this becomes a challenge to the country; the public administration programs do not know which indicators use to evaluate results and processes instead of processes alone. Thus we have the problem of giving a tendency to the information. I close this idea with the survey the OECD applied to 198 countries, this was given to Mexico twice, first in year 2000 then in year 2003; in the last one Mexico said the 30 thousand participating students belonged to an older rank of age and aside they were student with certain characteristics of abilities. Even this misinformation the country still failed the test.
 
V. Suárez: This is a very good and sad example. Which would be the principal products the federal government is delivering? What is the output of this system called “the federal executive”?
 
E. Salcedo: We have the budget divided for the product output in three functions: economical and social development and the government line. If we care for the economical development, and this part has to be with the fundamentals of generating spaces for new business, for new investments, we will realize the outputs and the products the government is delivering are awful. For example, the Delegation of Economy in our country is an old and used office whose programs for training entrepreneurs exist but are divorced from the bridges for financing. Nevertheless, the Secretary of Economical Development of the states has policies of production more active than the ones of the federal government, but the most delicate is that there is a divorce between the federal government and the state governments. To understand the kind of delivered products we have… the federal government says they have delivered one million and two hundred thousand loans, and the private sector wonders where they are, since they have not seen anything, and we are talking about two millions and five hundred thousand productive units from which five hundred thousand are registered and they give employment to twelve millions who are register in the social security system; we also have 2 million companies which do not see those results. On the other hand, the social development, its products are more tangible because the programs have already transcended and they have the support of international organisms, for example PROGRESA. They are assistance programs with very particular characteristics, with very special products and where in some way the international organizations are trying to get real advance. Anyway it will be difficult; the medical services sponsored by the federal government are poor quality services. There has been little investment and the users complain about the IMSS, ISSSTE; this is a universe of 50 millions people. In the same line, the unemployment insurance should be very kind and useful but the results are weak and even contradictory. Finally the social insecurity, there are so many cases of the failure, like the case of those policemen murdered in the south of the city and all of us could witness the federal, the local and the state governments lost and even fighting each other. There was a complete lack of coordination in this case and so many others. This is what is happening in the country and the government, and this does not allow it to deliver relevant products required by the society.
 
V. Suárez: Could you go deeper?
 
E. Salcedo: Well here I have a comment, I believe we should not take “the clients” as clients, this paradigm is also erroneous. The European countries, the members of the OECD do not see the population as clients, they think about them as “associates”. Once I was asked about the meaning of the situation for those who pay their taxes and for those who do not pay their taxes. The tax payers become associates of the government and the model is different when a stakeholder demands precise and accurate accountability, with accurate data about the investment or spending of any single peso and the achieved results. The client approach is rhetoric and obsolete according to the new models propositions. 
 
V. Suárez: Right Mr. Salcedo, let us go to the final section. I ask you to give us some recommendations on the base of your expertise and knowledge to build some strategies for the planning of the next six years. If you were an assistant of the new president, what would you advice him?
 
E. Salcedo: I would recover what I always hear in the possession ceremony of the United States presidents, no matter the party they belong to. They say they plan the next four year period on the base of an economical development of two hundred years. They take in account an increase based on their historical development. In the Mexican presidents´ ceremony they establish everything before them is wrong and poor and they will have to restart again and at the end of their period thing will be finally right. This implies a collapse with the past actions. I would recommend as a platform the consideration of three or four agreements, no more, and then, the commitment to all the elements that conform those agreements so that society at the end of the four years can have a logical background to evaluate, and the next cabinet gets the possibility of keep on building on the same base. For example, many of the public policies contained in the Presidential agenda can be discharged under that new order given through the CONAGO, the county governors are able to reform the retirement funds policies, to increase the federalization of the educative services and they can also reincorporate their counties to the federalization of the tax regimen. If these three points are developed correctly real changes may be achieved. This is my recommendation, no more.
 
V. Suárez: OK. On the base of the Theory of the Organization, which would be the suggestion for the middle positions?
 
E. Salcedo: First of all, I want to thank you for this interview. You have made me reflect about many years of work and topics that are very important for me. Particularly I think that if the country approves the budget via results, the next logical step is the assignation of who will do it, on the base of public servants with different focuses. I would also add the need of according contract among employers and employees for three months or for a year so that a clear chance to deliver expected results is given. There is a decalogue appointed by the OECD to design budgets via results. In that document the last three points mentions the public servants ought to be given responsibilities to be proved in a determined period to get a valuable development appraisal. This is the second logical axis the development appraisal systems should give enough information to get them out of the program is results are no adequate or get them another contract of the results are achieved.  This would allow the level of efficiency and productivity to grow in the organizational model of the government. I have to be more specific, the Mexican public administration is very big, what is going on in the Secretary of the Exterior is no happening in the Secretary of Government, what is taking place in PEMEX in not taking place in CFE, then specific limits and situations should take place in the life of any single organization of the federal government. It also must take in account general principles for a plan and the type of plan and the diagnosis and finally take in account it will be generally directed form the presidency of the republic. That’s it. Thank you.
 
V. Suárez: Would you like to add any comment, suggestion, idea?
 
E. Salcedo:  OK, When we were students this sort of technique you are using for your research was seldom used so I hope when you have the results you allow me to know them because it is going to be very interesting what the other experts told you and I also do thank you for the insertion of myself in this group of experts. I hope this investigation you are performing could become useful to somebody of those who take decisions and to generate some alternatives for the expectations of the society.
 
V. Suárez: Master Édgar Salcedo I am very grateful because this has been very valuable for the research. Since I have already been with some other people talking about the same ideas I can appreciate the richness of your participation. Thank you.

[1] Integral Services Centers.
[2] For Mexico they are the RFC, Registro Federal de Causantes or the CURP, Clave Única de Registro de Población, the first is the ID for paying taxes and the second is a national population clue.