Process Management in the Public Sector: A Brazilian Case Study

In the last decades, the public sector has been under pressure for improving its performance and showing more transparency and assessment of results. Historically, the Brazilian public sector has developed a departmental and bureaucratic structure, which makes difficult the activity coordination and service efficiency and efficacy. In this scenario, process management provides an alternative to the static and fragmented structure of organization, with a systemic vision, focused on the customer or citizen. Additionally, process management emphasizes process improvement, reached by information technology implementation and technology changes. Thus, process management and technology management are interdependent. In this context, the objective of this work is to present the adoption of process management and expose the usefulness of information technology to support operations and measure performance indicators, in a centenary Public Institution of Undergraduate Education (PIUE), during a project of administrative process improvement. The methodology used was the case study, with qualitative and quantitative approach. The results obtained, measured by performance indicators, were very satisfactory, since the studied process has reached significant improvement with respect to throughput time and quality of output. Moreover, given the major need for improvement of the processes of the public sector, the case description and the analysis of the results present evident practical application, providing a base for future work.