Noticias
Acknowledgement for the Best Public Servants in the World Take Place in Medellín
AntioquíaMedellín
On June 26th, at the Metropolitan Theater of Medellín, the United Nations Public Service Awards and its Closing Ceremony took place, having had the participation of more than 800 public servants and delegates from 100 countries.
Maria Isabel Mejía, Vice-Minister of Information Systems and Technology for the ICT Ministry, along with Lenni Montiel, General Sub-Secretary of Economic Development at the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA) and Liliana Caballero, Director of the Public Service, hosted the closing ceremony of the Public Service Forum and the United Nations Public Administration Award Ceremony.
The forum, which took place from June 23rd to 26th in Medellín, had the participation of 14 ministers of Information and Communication Technologies product portfolios, and of affairs related with public services, all of them from countries such as Azerbaijan, Bahamas, Ecuador, Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Latvia, Portugal, and Senegal.
During the award ceremony, 22 public initiatives from 18 countries received an acknowledgement in 4 categories:
· Improving Public Service Delivery
· Fostering the Participation of the citizens in public policy-making through innovative mechanisms
· Promoting integral government approaches in the information age
· Promoting a gender-responsive public service delivery
The award ceremony marks the closing of this World Forum that took place in Latin America for the first time ever, and that represented significant progress in the public sector and the post-2015 development agenda discussions.
According to IT Vice-Minister Maria Isabel Mejía, "After wrapping up the meetings, it is possible to see a citizen-oriented focus aimed at their wellbeing and at how to address their needs. Besides finding new pathways to empower the citizen's relationship with the state, we also opted for working to achieved integrated, intelligent and open governments that use ICTs to achieve their goals".
The IT Vice-Minister also added that some of the challenges that the countries that participated in the Forum have in common have to do with generating different governability schemes within e-Government strategies, fostering an interest in carrying out intelligent policies in high management, taking national policy-making and bringing it down to territorial contexts, and bridging electronic media access gaps.
This Forum allowed servants to work on the capacity building aimed at the construction of a public service management model for Colombia; to strengthen ethical capabilities, integrity, and responsibility in the public service of Latin American countries; to turn e-Government into a sustainable development-oriented driving force for institutional integration; and to make use of innovation in gender-responsive public service aimed at sustainable development, for the post-2015 agenda and for e-Government.
