This time it’s the board of directors of ‘agency for administrative modernisation’
The government has effected yet another top level dismissal within a public body: this time dispensing with the Board of Directors of the Agency of Administrative Modernisation (AMA), and replacing it, instantly, with a new team.
The new ‘broom’ led by Sofia Mota, previously director of TicAPP – the State’s Centre for Digital Competence – takes over as of today.
The former board, led by João Dias, is ‘not happy’, threatening legal action, and accusing Margarida Balseiro Lopes, the Minister (of Youth and Modernisation) of a less than rigorous approach.
Talking to ECO online, João Dias, said: “I am considering taking all the necessary measures to defend my honour and my good name as a public manager, including taking legal action”.
Dias said what ‘surprised’ him most about this decision was that “AMA’s Board of Directors only had two meetings with the minister lasting five minutes each, one in which she asked for a large amount of information, and the other in which she delivered the ‘fait accompli’:
“Since this government took office, I’ve had one meeting with the minister – which lasted five minutes – who said she was going to make a big request for information within a certain time frame.
“We delivered the requested information on time, and had no further contact”, he said.
“In the meantime, the minister arranged a meeting at the Presidency of the Council of Ministers, which took place on Tuesday at 7pm, and which also only took five minutes, at which the minister announced the dismissal of the AMA board of directors”.
The government’s ‘side of the story’ is that AMA’s board failed to comply with various commitments. Observador cited the “failure to meet 70% of targets and intermediate milestones set out in the Plan for Recovery and Resilience Plan (PRR) for 2023, particularly in the opening of new shops and Citizen Spaces, with a potential impact on the disbursement targets set for 2026”.
The government also claims AMA’s Board of Directors was also responsible for “non-compliance with other activities set out in the 2023 Activity Plan”, and for “damaging management of human resources that led to the departure of almost 80 AMA workers, some in senior positions with a direct impact on the organisation”.
Observador continues, suggesting there was a “lack of coordination with the supervisory body for interventions of a public nature and institutional representation”.
The “lack of coordination regarding the launch and implementation of the National Strategy for Smart Territories, which has led to protests over the lack of involvement of municipalities and the centralised way in which it is intended to be operationalised by AMA”, has been another reason reportedly given by the government.
According to Lusa, João Dias is not buying any of these explanations: “‘There was never an opportunity to contradict each other; there was never an opportunity for us to explain that some of the PRR’s goals were moved from 2022 to 2023, that the citizen’s shops didn’t go ahead as planned because the municipalities launched tenders for contracts that were abandoned and that, in certain areas, we acted as intermediaries and that, for this reason, the implementation of certain programmes depended on other bodies and other ministries,’ he told reporters.
João Dias took office in January 2023 for a five-year term, scheduled to end in 2028.
This is just the latest in a kaleidoscope of top level changes since the centre-right government came into office in April.
Source material: LUSA/ SIC/ Observador
