In this 2018 interview, Tatiana Andía, now a professor at the University of Los Andes in Bogota, discusses the challenges facing Colombia’s health sector, principles of bureaucratic reform, and her experience as part of the health ministry’s drug price regulation team, whose work triggered a high-stakes showdown with the global pharmaceutical industry that had dramatic, unintended implications for Colombia’s foreign policy.
Tatiana Andía was an expert on the political economy of access to medicines conducting PhD dissertation research at the Colombian health ministry when the minister asked her to join a small, upstart team focused on regulating out-of-control pharmaceutical prices. Lowering the cost of drugs was crucial for ensuring the health care system’s financial sustainability, the ministry’s top priority for the sector.
Liliana Caballero describes the pillars of the Admirable Public Administration goal of Antanas Mockus' Development Plan for Bogotá. This program for institutional strengthening sought to: 1) foster responsibility amongst civil servants; 2) guarantee a continuity of vision across mayoral administrations; 3) institutionalize shared work, coordination and teamwork; 4) enhance interaction with the citizenry, specifically through the Program of Service to the Citizen; 5) strengthen external accountability; 6) capitalize on lessons from every experience; 7) inspire respect for separation of powers; and 8) promote co-responsibility and self-regulation predicated upon awareness of rights and responsibilities both amongst public servants and the citizenry. She then focuses on specific initiatives aimed at achieving these goals. First, Caballero highlights the implementation of a peer nomination system for public servants who exceed expectations in the performance of their function as an effective means to promote self-awareness and excellence. Second, she emphasizes adaptation of service delivery schemes to the realities on the ground. In this sense, the Mockus administration promoted computerization of municipal paperwork and utility payment. However, in response to the fact that 60% of the Bogotá population lacks access to the necessary technology, a "supermarket model" was adopted to cater to this demographic. Three tiers of CADES or Specialized District Centers of Attention were established, with the Super CADES allowing for transactions at both the local and national levels, regular CADES offering a wide range of services at the district level, and rapid CADES offering short lines and efficient customer service for rapid payment of utilities. These centers were built strategically in neighborhoods where the target population would reside or work, and flexible schedules were set up in order to minimize travel time, inconvenience during working hours and expense. Third, Caballero describes several strategies to identify public servants best suited for interaction with the public and to create a public service mentality focused on responsiveness to taxpayers. A successful innovation in this area that later transcended the civil service arena was the creation of "transversal teams" that bring together people that share similar responsibilities in the areas of support for different entities, allowing for discussion of competence, identification of best practices and capacity building in the face of limited resources.
A criminal lawyer by training, Liliana Caballero has dedicated most of her career to the public sector. She served as Antanas Mockus' secretary general at the rectory of the National University of Colombia, later joining him as secretary general of the Bogotá Mayorship and effective second-in-command during his second term in office. She was in charge of the implementation of the Development Plan goal for Admirable Public Service and has worked as a presidential consultant on administrative reform on several occasions. Caballero was the National Director of Antanas Mockus' 2010 presidential campaign with the Colombian Green Party.
Vargas characterizes the Centro de Coordinación de Acción Integral (CCAI, Comprehensive Action Coordination Center) as a coordinating agent established under the Colombian Presidency that connects local demands with national supply. Focusing on the Montes de María region, Vargas traces a process of i) identifying Montes de María as a strategic transit point near the Venezuelan border and the Caribbean sea that merits institutional attention, ii) assessing local priorities incorporating input from local authorities and producers (including the chamber of commerce, avocado and cacao growers), iii) relaying that assessment to the national level for strategic action, and iv) facilitating state interventions in the region. CCAI activities pertaining to two main issue areas: road infrastructure and land ownership. Vargas singles out the Transversal de los Montes de María, a major road across the region that is under construction by army engineers, but some work is done on secondary roads by private contractors. He notes that in the face of limited resources, the CCAI chose to maximize impact by focusing on highly productive and densely populated areas and by delivering durable (but more expensive) road infrastructure, which led to a tradeoff between number of projects and quality of output. To put CCAI land ownership work in context, Vargas points out that the issue is complicated by internal displacement and land transactions during the conflict, by the return of the displaced in the post-conflict era, by a culture of informality and by limited state capacity. To address this range of situations, the CCAI has adopted three approaches: First, to coordinate investigation of land purchases during the conflict, exploring the possibility of transactions under duress. Second, to normalize land ownership through various programs focused on restitution. Third, to promote socially-responsible industrialization by providing platforms for dialogue between small landowners and new private developers. Vargas also shortly elaborates on a pilot program aimed at victims from small towns, on funding sources, on channels of cooperation with regional authorities and on recent structural changes within the CCAI. He underscores that the Center does not pursue a policy of return for the internally displaced, but instead responds to the observable phenomenon that they are returning on their own. He also assimilates the problem of continuity across political administrations with the need to phase out CCAI activities as local capacity is strengthened. He closes by zeroing in on two keys for success: honesty about what can and cannot be done when dealing with the local community, and the fostering of trust, which may require an intervention as inexpensive but valuable as installing a water pump.
Juan Carlos Vargas Morales was involved with the Centro de Coordinación de Acción Integral (CCAI) from the start, serving as the delegate from the Ministry of the Interior and Law to the Center for nine years. He later worked on National Consolidation issues in the Montes de María Region on behalf of the Agencia Presidencial para la Acción Social y la Cooperación Internacional (Presidential Agency for Social Action and International Cooperation).
In this Interview, Castro describes his role in issuing the 1993 Organic Statute of Bogotá that put an end to decades of governability deficit and bankruptcy in the city. He credits the Constitutional amendments of 1991 for enabling the reform process without garnering prohibitive resistance early on, but he attributes that lack of opposition to indifference and underestimation of the future impact of the changes rather than agreement with the project for Bogotá. Once the constitutional mandate for passage of the statute was in place, drafting was initially delegated to Congress, while Castro found himself participating in what he describes as a de facto joint administration with the Bogotá Concejo (city council) that exceeded the limits established by constitutional separation of powers. He dedicated his first year in office to assembling a highly competent and depoliticized team, in what amounted to a break with Colombian tradition. He managed to deal with pressures in this respect by appointing Concejo members’ protégés for politically inconsequential posts. During his first year, Castro also acquired the practical experience that would inform his draft of the statute once Congress failed to produce a viable document. The Organic Statute passed by decree in late 1993, and became the road map for Bogotá by formalizing the separation of powers between the mayor’s office and the Concejo down to the implementation level, introducing a decentralized regime within the city and setting the bases for comprehensive taxation reform. Castro was then confronted with high political costs—including the possibility of impeachment—that were compounded when the statute came into force at the same time that the electoral campaign of 1994 started. Castro points to the lack of immediate visibility of the reform that made him especially vulnerable to criticism by political opportunists, particularly on taxation matters. Despite campaign promises to the contrary, the statute was left untouched as it began to deliver results. In discussing potential shortcomings of the final statute, Castro highlights the lack of attention to the regional dimension. On that note, he calls for a unified approach to address common problems across issue areas that plague Bogotá and the surrounding municipalities in Cundimarca. In closing, he encourages other reformers to take office ready to spend rather than increase their political capital by passing unpopular but necessary measures.
A lawyer and statistician by training, Jaime Castro Castro had a distinguished academic career in public administration. In 1968, he was appointed as Presidential Secretary for Administrative Reform under President Carlos Lleras Restrepo. Two years later, he became President Misael Pastrana’s Legal Secretary to the Office of the Presidency before being promoted to Minister of Justice and Law in 1973. A year later, he was elected Senator and later served as Minister of Government for Belisario Betancur. He was a member of the National Constitutional Assembly of 1991 before being elected as mayor of Bogotá in 1992. After completing his term in 1994, he has remained active in politics and academia.
Maria Isabel Patiño recounts her experiences as director of the Urban Development Institute in Bogotá, Colombia. She recalls some of the technical, legal, and political issues surrounding the implementation of the Transmilenio system. She highlights problems the city had with the administration of public resources and strategies for overcoming them. She details the process for designing and completing major infrastructure projects with an emphasis on the system of contracting. There was also a clause that imposed stiff penalties if a contractor failed to fulfill its responsibilities. Patiño describes the loan structure and how road construction helped strengthen relations between the local and national governments. She discusses some of the difficulties in establishing a good working relationship with the City Council in order to put in place valorization contributions. She describes how the institute designed a methodology to allocate scarce resources for the repair of local roads. She also talks about the challenges of communicating distribution policies to the public and stresses the importance of involving people and explaining decisions in non-technical ways. She describes how the institute used universities as impartial arbiters for conflict resolution. According to Patiño, Bogotá was equipped to institute the reforms it did because of its independence from the national government.
At the time of this interview, Maria Isabel Patiño was the senior executive director for Corporación Visionarios por Colombia, a nonprofit public-policy organization, where she was engaged in civic advocacy, education projects, urban mobility, transportation and public services. Between 2001 and 2003, she served as the director of the Urban Development Institute, the public entity that builds and maintains the mobility infrastructure in Bogotá. Previously, she was executive president of the Colombian flower exporters' association and of the banana growers association. She was also the former executive committee coordinator for the United Nations' Alexander Humboldt Institute bio-trade project promoting sustainable agricultural production.
David Escobar describes his role as private secretary to Medellín Mayor Sergio Fajardo and his strategy for reducing violence and bringing about improvements to the city’s complicated problems. He relates how the mayor introduced a package of social interventions such as education, health, public works, and urban transformation. He also describes the process of tackling corruption and getting a development plan approved by the City Council. He specifically highlights the importance of City Hall’s public communication program. He recalls efforts to work with the teachers to implement education reform rather than making demands or ostracizing them. Escobar lists four qualities that he looked for in his staff: knowledge, honesty, social sensitivity, and passion. He describes a process of prioritization, whereby the mayor chose to focus on 13 large projects and develop a simple monitoring system to ensure their completion, instead of pursuing many smaller ones.
At the time of this interview, David Escobar was manager of Sergio Fajardo’s presidential campaign in Colombia. Previously, he served as private secretary during Fajardo’s mayoral administration in Medellín. During that time, he led the office that controlled and directed strategic projects. He also served as the de facto chief of staff.
Diego Molano discusses the creation and development of Colombia's Center for Coordination of Integrated Action (CCAI). The organization was based on three principles: inter-agency coordination, instilling of trust in the military, and keeping a low profile by ensuring that no institution became prominent. The CCAI targeted areas characterized by the presence of armed groups, internal population displacement and the growing of illicit crops. It worked with the military to use five tools that consisted of humanitarian assistance, social programs for education and health, social infrastructure, economic development projects, and finally, culture, sports, and leisure, which contributed to building trust and confidence in the government and other institutions. Molano also discusses the use of the Padrino Model that included a “Godfather” who was accountable for the results in one of the 14 institutions in the CCAI. The CCAI later adopted the La Macarena model that supplanted institutions instead of creating them. Initially, the CCAI operated on solely domestic resources, but it later received support from the United States Agency for International Development and the international community.
At the time of this interview, Diego Molano was the high commissioner for Acción Social, the Presidential Agency for Social Action and International Cooperation. He was previously the coordinator of MIDAS (Additional Investment for Sustainable Alternative Development), which is a USAID program. Molano was also one of the founders of the Center for Coordination of Integrated Action. He served as the director of the presidential programs of Acción Social. He also worked as the coordinator of the social component of Plan Colombia. He was a professor at the Faculty of Political Science and Government and International Relations at Universidad del Rosario in Bogotá. He earned a master’s degree in public administration from Columbia University in New York.
Ingrid Morales talks about her work as the coordinator of social development for Plan de Consolidación Integral de la Macarena (Plan for the Integrated Consolidation of the Macarena). She was mainly involved in the fields of health, education, and housing. She explains how PCIM ensured health centers had the required infrastructure and personnel. She discusses the significance of medical and surgical sessions in allowing the community to get specialized assistance for sicknesses or surgeries that were inaccessible from the rural areas. In education, she elaborates on the “New School” program that was established to train teachers. Also, she explains the working of the school system together with the Family Wellbeing Institute, which had a program for nutrition, food security, psychology, and intra-family violence help. In the housing sector, she talks about the partnership of the state, the municipality, and the community in providing housing. She identifies the role of cooperation in building trust in the state and in the development of the public sector. Morales also explains the SISBEN system (Sistema de Identificación de Potenciales Beneficiarios de Programas Sociales), which involved those who lacked the resources to sustain themselves. Once they were registered in the system, they could receive food aid, health services, education and housing subsidies.
At the time of this interview, Ingrid Morales was the coordinator of social development for Plan de Consolidación Integral de la Macarena (Plan for the Integrated Consolidation of the Macarena). She was in charge of health, education and housing. She had extensive experience as a public administrator.
A. Plata discusses Colombian measures to gradually improve the efficacy of the police force. He discusses efforts to increase the size of the force in terms of both personnel and the number of police stations, as well as moves to improve training, mobility and equipment. He explains Colombian efforts to increase cooperation across regions, as well as with its neighbors. Colombia also established rural community policing, and engaged in community outreach measures to educate the public about the role of the police and their rights under the constitution, and to regain their trust.
At the time of this interview, A. Plata was the coordinator at the Regional Coordination Center in Colombia. A colonel, he served more than two decades as a member of the Colombian National Police Force, both as an administrator and as a policeman. He was in charge of the Montes de Maria region of Colombia.
Henry Samacá Prieto, the coordinator for economic development for Plan de Consolidación Integral de la Macarena (Plan for the Integrated Consolidation of the Macarena), discusses Colombian efforts to spur economic growth in Colombia’s six municipalities in Macarena. He begins by discussing the problems related to the growth of coca crops in Colombia, and efforts to redirect agricultural economic activity in ways that are conducive to economic growth. The first project aimed to provide in kind nutritional aid to rural families, along with assisting them in providing food through the farm. The second program aimed to assist farmers by providing them with capital in the form of equipment and agricultural raw materials. The last project provided guidance, technical assistance, microcredit, and governmental support for rural communities to economically reintegrate with the rest of Colombia. he also discusses the role of capital accumulation, livestock, credit, and training in encouraging economic development. Lastly, he discusses the role, and the shortcomings, of the Banco Agrario de Colombia (Agricultural Bank of Colombia) in allowing rural communities to achieve economic prosperity.
At the time of the interview, Henry Samacá Prieto was employed as the coordinator for economic development for Plan de Consolidación Integral de la Macarena (Plan for the Integrated Consolidation of the Macarena), in Colombia.
