IBGE: loss of servers and modernization bring challenges – 02/20/2023 – Market

The challenges facing the IBGE (Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics) go beyond the need to overcome delays in completing the 2022 Demographic Census.

Budgetary constraints, a drop in the number of effective employees and difficulty in recomposing the staff are part of this list, points out Assibge, which represents the workers of the research body.

According to the union entity, the IBGE had 4,009 permanent employees in December 2022. The number is 42.5% less than that registered in the same month of 2010 (6,971), the year of the last completed edition of the Census.

Of the total staff, around 24% can retire at any time, according to Assibge. Given this scenario, the union defends the replacement of the workforce through public tenders.

“Many servants are waiting for the Census to end to retire, because this is an important moment”, reports Bruno Perez, director of the national executive of Assibge.

As with the Census, which is usually done every ten years, the institute needs temporary workers to carry out the other surveys.

Assibge claims that there are around 5,000 temporary workers working today, excluding those hired especially for the Census operation.

“More than 50% of the workforce is made up of temporary workers. It’s a bad thing because they stay for a maximum of three years,” says Perez.

In a note, the IBGE states that there were requests for a public tender to recompose the permanent staff at the end of last year. The institute’s interim management also says it is “sensitive to all these issues”.

“However, medium and long-term deliberations on this can only be dealt with between the current government and the future direction of the IBGE, which should be defined shortly”, said the institute.

Economist Eduardo Rios Neto was exonerated as president of the IBGE in early January, shortly after the inauguration of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT). Rios Neto is being substituted on an interim basis by Cimar Azeredo, director of research at the institute.

In the Lula government, the IBGE was under the umbrella of the Ministry of Planning, commanded by Simone Tebet. In the management of Jair Bolsonaro (PL), the institute was part of the structure of the former Ministry of Economy, led by Paulo Guedes.

Tebet has not yet announced the name that will head the IBGE. One of the possibilities is for Azeredo to remain in the interim position until the conclusion of the Census, whose definitive data is expected to be released in April.

technological transition

During Bolsonaro’s term, the institute was the target of attacks within the government itself. In July 2021, Guedes said that the IBGE was in the “chipped stone” age.

The statement generated criticism of the minister at the time, since it would be up to the government to modernize the research body’s operating conditions.

Former president of the IBGE, economist Sérgio Besserman Vianna believes that the technological transition is not an exclusive challenge for the Brazilian institute. The transformation also impacts the routine of statistical bodies abroad, he says.

In the view of Besserman Vianna, who chaired the IBGE from 1999 to 2003, the institute has already been modernizing processes, and the adoption of technological tools in this Census is an example of that.

According to him, there is a need for further advances, and the use of administrative records (data from other public bodies) should be expanded for the production of statistics.

“The world is undergoing a revolution with regard to data and information. Every statistical institute, no matter how rich the country, is being challenged by this new reality, that of big data.”

The economist claims that the “most valuable asset of the IBGE” is still human capital and that defending the recomposition of part of the staff is important. However, he considers that, with the technological transition, there is no longer room for all the vacancies of the past.

Sociologist Simon Schwartzman, also a former president of the IBGE, makes a similar assessment.

“Today the institute needs to have a smaller structure, but well qualified, and that works in a more integrated way with other agencies, other bodies. There is a tendency to rely more on administrative records”, says Schwartzman, who chaired the IBGE from 1994 to 1998 .

In his view, the staff reduction was not done in a “planned” way. “The IBGE no longer needs such a widespread structure. The problem is that this reduction was not carried out in a planned manner. There was an emptying, and no new model was thought of”, he points out.

The Census, produced by the IBGE, is the most detailed picture of the demographic and socioeconomic conditions of the Brazilian population.

Data collection was put into the field in August 2022. Initially, the institute planned to close the operation in three months, until October.

The work, however, suffered delays and is still ongoing after six months. During the collection, the IBGE faced difficulties in hiring and keeping the census takers in activity.

Some of these workers, hired on a temporary basis, complained about late payments and lower-than-expected values. There were withdrawals and threat of strike in the category.

The new edition of the Census was scheduled for 2020, but was postponed to the following year due to the pandemic. In 2021, there was another delay due to the budget cut for the research.

“The challenge is for Brazilian society as a whole –federal government, states, city halls, private sector– to value the production of statistical knowledge […]. We are a society that values ​​little knowledge”, says Besserman Vianna.

Earlier this month, the Minister of Planning, Simone Tebet, said that the IBGE “is a Brazilian asset” and criticized the treatment given to the body in the Bolsonaro government.

Tebet met in Brasilia with the current board and the 27 regional superintendents of the institute and defended the holding of the Census.