Organizational change, information technologies and strengthening of public management

The case of the National Directorate of Migration (2008-2015)

Abstract

Although the use of information technologies had haved a strong position in the main efforts to strengthen the public institutions over last decades, this phenomenon has not (paradoxically) attracted enough attention from those who are dedicated to studying the processes of improvement of the public sector. In this sense, this paper analyzes the main key factors and challenges involved in the use of information technologies to improve public management, based on the case of the National Directorate of Migration of the Argentine Republic between 2008 and 2015. Thus, between the main factors that contributed to strengthening the management of this public body was the technological environment, the political leadership at the highest level, the strategy of incremental improvements sustained over time, the incorporation of human resources, the personnel training initiatives , a budgetary allocation according to the complexity of the initiatives and the management of the technology area aligned with the objectives of the organization. For its part, the main challenges were related to the need for an integral management for people's development into the organization, the tension between the dynamism technology supply and the capacity to acquire ICT equipment, the poor evaluation and the weak coordination with other public organizations with different levels of technological development.