Interviews| Transitions in the executive direction of think tanks
[Editor’s note: Interview with Julia Pomares, the new director of the Center for the Implementation of Public Policies for Equity and Growth (CIPPEC). In this interview she describes how the transition was conducted, analyzes the institution’s strategic agenda until 2020, and emphasizes that think tanks are key in order to reverse the unequal distribution of scientific knowledge in the world. This interview was conducted by Federico Frascheri and translated by Federico Roitman. The interview is also available in Spanish.]
Federico Frascheri (FF): How was the transition for the executive direction planned and implemented?
Julia Pomares (JP): It was a very special transition for CIPPEC because it was more abrupt than the previous transitions. The last one, when Fernando Straface assumed the position, had been a transition with quite a lot of time. In this case, it was very much influenced by the external context of the change in government on December 10th, in particular at the national level and in the province of Buenos Aires, in terms of political orientation, and in general in all the districts in the country. Consequently, there were many changes within CIPPEC, involving people with significant responsibilities inside the institution who then transitioned to have important positions in different departments within the government. Among them was the previous executive director, who assumed an relevant position within the government of the city of Buenos Aires. For this reason, the transition was more abrupt than the previous one: from the moment the board of administrators made me the offer to the moment that I assumed the position of Executive Director three weeks had passed.
FF: What does this change imply for CIPPEC?
JP: This change had some special characteristics: I am the first executive director who was not a founder, which shows a maturity in the institutional consolidation of CIPPEC. Furthermore, I am the first female executive director. Also the change in executive directors coincides with a change beyond a change in the ruling party: it coincides with a generational change, a renewal in all political parties, just as much in the ruling party as in the opposition, in the municipalities of the Conurbano (NoE: outskirts, periphery of the city, outside its administrative boundaries) and in the national government, with a lot of new younger people in politics. All of the internal change in CIPPEC was tied to this, and it is very difficult to understand without comprehending the external changes in the political system in Argentina.
FF: What are the primary challenges you have identified since you began as executive director? What will be the main strategies?
JP: The first short term challenge was that departures in some important positions in the institution created vacancies that had to be filled.
A more crucial challenge was the thematic agenda of CIPPEC. It seems to me that a change in the political system should prompt a center for public policy to rethink its thematic agenda. It is assumed that this type of organization does not think of subjects in the abstract, but rather thinks about those subjects in relation to which have more relevance to the political system or which should be promoted because the system does not consider them during the policymaking process. The process of rethinking our strategic agenda had already begun before the end of Straface’s term, during a very interesting process of internal reflection where we were supported by McKinsey pro-bono and in which all members of CIPPEC participated. We thought about what the challenges were and set benchmarks with other think tanks to which we would like to be similar to and others we believe are similar to us, and we thought about what should be the objective that should be reached. The result was “CIPPEC 2020.” This internal process greatly helped carry those initial months because the plan was already advancing: in December the process of internal reflection had finished and we began to convert it into a work plan along with Fabian Repetto, who moved to fill the role of director of strategic planning.
In this new phase a third structural challenge I will have as executive director is to continue demonstrating that CIPPEC is an independent organization. In a country like Argentina, the idea that a center for public policy with very technically skilled people who at the same time have experience in the government and in the State, and who come and go between the public sector and a place like CIPPEC, is not very developed. Besides, the departures of various people to the national and city governments, which are of the same political affiliation, makes it so there could be a risk in the perception of CIPPEC. No one doubts that CIPPEC must continue to be an independent think tank and take advantage of this new stage to maximize its impact.
FF: What external conditions may facilitate or block these strategies?
JP: There is an external condition that complicates CIPPEC’s new stage: there are a lot of new governments looking for people with knowledge and experience in public policy, which is at times scarce, and this is a place that attracts that profile. Because of this, now, there is much more competition for that human resource than there was previously.
At the same time, an external factor that contributes to strengthening our job is that there exists a demand and a large possibility for impact from some national ministries who are approaching CIPPEC. Being a new generation, with less experience in public policy, or with more necessity for evidence and data, they ask and demand more of the institution. This makes it more complex to decide when CIPPEC should provide technical support to a government and when it should choose a strategy of external advocacy. This also requires more sophistication in the impact strategy. To the extent that one has a fluid relationship with governments, the complexity of seeing in what moments one decides to influence through work with officials and when to influence via public campaigns begins.
I’ll give you an example: CIPPEC has promoted that there should be a law about access of public information almost since it was created; in 2001 it had the first project. We created many documents, opinion articles, and developed activities to promote this. Years later, after a data request regarding beneficiaries of social programs from the Ministry of Social Development, we litigated, a strategy CIPPEC has used very few times. It was done with the support of the ADC, and the case reached the Supreme Court, which in 2014 ruled in favor of CIPPEC. This established a precedent for the law which has now obtained preliminary approval. When the President took office and he and several government representatives said that they were going to put the subject on the agenda again, many organizations celebrated. But there was a topic we always raised and believe is very important: the independence of the organ that makes decisions surrounding access to information. The project the Executive sent to Congress did not have this characteristic, although we had had several conversations with the technical department that had prepared the project; we made it clear that we believed that the Congress should hold the discussion and include it. Together with many organizations and respected actors in the field of politics we made a public campaign to establish the need for an independent organ. Finally, we succeeded and in the project approved in the House of Representatives an article was incorporated that said that the authority must be removed with the approval of Congress, which gave it greater independence. In that case we took a more external influence strategy.
FF: Is it possible and desirable to institutionalize the consulting of scientific knowledge in the design of public policy?
JP: In Germany or in England, for example, the commissions in Parliament have to make mandatory technical enquiries to define a subject. I believe that we have much more basic challenges than those. They have to do with how public information is produced, how it is stored, processed, and filed. It seems to me that access to information is an intermediate step between production, a previous process, and use, the subsequent step: one can access the information but it is possible that it is never used in the public policy process. I believe that in Argentina we have a lot of problems to produce high-quality information, trustworthy in terms of stability of the data across time, about how to review processes of data quality and in terms of the storage procedures and coordination of information between the areas that produce the information. We had and we still have a National Institute of Statistics and Census that has serious problems regarding the reliability of its information and it is the heart of the statistics system of Argentina. That says that the production of data is an important topic. To be able to think about institutionalization, first we have to have the discussion about the production of information.
There are mechanisms or incentives so the information is used. There I believe the role of Congress is very important. CIPPEC has made for years a proposal for a parliamentary budget office with technical, stable and capable staff to follow budget data, which is the most important annual law. As long as we don’t have monitoring of the budget, we do not have monitoring of what the State does.
It is true that there is a question linked to culture. I believe that society does not take information as a truly valid input in conversation. I am not saying this is the only issue: Public policy is created based on information, ideology, religion, what people say in surveys. There are many ingredients in public policy, but information and technical analysis have to play a role. We still don’t have fully clear that as a society. It is reflected a lot in discussions in the media, where budgetary questions are almost never talked about. Behind every public policy decision that the State takes, there is a decision to allocate scarce finite resources, which involves choosing between one thing and another. That I think is basic, but in the conversation about public policy in the media, we still do not mention it. I think there is a long way to go and in that sense the role of CIPPEC is key.
FF: In the last Meeting of Latin-American Think Tanks it was mentioned that the region barely produces 2.3% of the social science research in the world and it is strongly concentrated in the richer countries (Argentina, Brazil, Mexico). How can this trend be reversed? What role does an Argentine think tank like CIPPEC have in the region?
JP: The unequal distribution of scientific knowledge in the work is a very important issue and is absent in discussions. Despite globalization, the internet and what would supposedly bring to access to information democratization, the inequality in terms of where knowledge is produced has worsened in the last 20 years. Societies have become more unequal and I suppose this is another aspect to understand that inequality. As centers of public policy, which are organizations dedicated to the dissemination of knowledge in public policy, is a relevant aspect. However, I think they are even more important because they translate information which is hard to access by decision makers and advisers involved in public policy.
I also believe that there are policies in some organizations, especially in Brazil, asking for access to free academic journals for third sector organizations or regions of Latin and South America, which are like grains of sand but laudable initiatives, at least for organizations that are devoted to public policy issues, to access to information and not have to pay for it.
Then I think there is something that would help reverse or mitigate this issue, which is to generate more triangular and South-South cooperation between the organizations. This makes knowledge to circulate more. To the extent that more access to information is democratized, we will have better quality public policy and thus, societies with more development and equality, which is our mission at CIPPEC.
