Experiências Internacionais de Implementação da Gestão do Conhecimento no Setor Público

Global development presents significant challenges for public administrations that provide services to citizens.

A more transparent, innovative, effective and efficient public administration is required, capable of managing scarce resources in complex political, economic and social contexts.

Experts speak of three pillars of development:

• The first, the development of the countries' intellectual capital, which is achieved with more investments in education, technology, science, research and development.
• The second pillar is physical infrastructures that facilitate economic activity, production, foreign investment or trade.
• The third pillar is good governance, based on transparent and efficient public institutions, independent and agile judicial systems, effective tax systems, strong laws on intellectual property and competition, labor laws that value human resources and satisfy the needs of the production system.

Economies at these advanced levels of development are able to balance these three pillars. Now, being able to balance these pillars is a challenge that public entities will only be able to achieve using good knowledge management practices.

As for Portuguese public administration, we found evidence that the use of knowledge management practices is still in an embryonic phase, being little consistent and formalized.

Many knowledge management practices implemented by public entities are not aligned with the strategic orientation of organizations.

In recent years, the interest of Portuguese public managers in knowledge management practices has increased. However, due to too many economic restrictions and a lack of strategy by successive governments, the effects of these practices have been barely visible.

Even when there are good examples of sharing good knowledge management practices, as is the case of the Rede Comum de Conhecimento of the Agência para a Modernização Administrativa Portuguesa, the overall results are still not very significant.

Considering the strong historical, cultural, social and economic ties between Portugal and Brazil and taking into account the advances in disseminating the use of knowledge management practices that have been carried out by Ipea, the Association for the Accreditation of Intellectual Capital Management (ICAA) is promoting, in Portugal, the book “Experiências Internacionais de Implementação da Gestão do Conhecimento no Setor Público”.

This work has its great richness in the diversity of knowledge management experiences, implemented in different international contexts (Canada, Chile, Portugal, Mexico, United Kingdom, Germany, Austria and Switzerland), being, therefore, a source of learning and of exchanging experiences.

It is with great pride and a sense of responsibility that ICAA presents this work in Portugal, as it was prepared by Fábio Ferreira Batista, an excellent specialist and researcher in knowledge management in public administration, with renowned international work, who, by the way , is also a Portuguese citizen. It should be added that the work also includes examples of good knowledge management practices in Portuguese public administration, presented by professor and researcher Leonor Pais.

By publishing this work in Portugal, ICAA hopes to contribute to a better understanding of the particularities of knowledge management in Portuguese public administration and, at the same time, promote the implementation of these practices in national public administration policies and strategies.