The modernization of the State and public employment is one of the reforms the government wants to push forward during this presidential term. For that reason, the Executive created two commissions. One is the Ministerial Advisory Commission for the Modernization of Public Employment, and the other is the Commission for the New Architecture of the State, which is chaired by the executive director of Libertad y Desarrollo, Bettina Horst. Both must present their conclusions next December. In this context, the Centro de Estudios Públicos (CEP) produced a report with a battery of proposals to be delivered to both bodies, in order to contribute to the discussion and influence the measures ultimately adopted. "In light of the CEP's nearly 40 years of work on State modernization and the work the commissions convened by the Government are carrying out today, we are launching this agenda to move forward with diagnoses and proposals, which respond to a systemic view and are aimed at improving the effectiveness of the State and the capacity of democracy," notes the report prepared by researchers from that study center: Alfonso España, Sebastián Izquierdo, Juan Luis Ossa and Jorge Rodríguez. The document warns that, without a systemic and comprehensive view of the State, "no succession of partial reforms will solve the underlying problem, with the latent risk of maintaining an ineffective State that sacrifices citizens' trust in institutions and the legitimacy of democracy itself." This report presents 10 main measures for the State modernization agenda. The first is the reorganization of related ministries to help reduce duplications in the cabinet and administrative costs, without necessarily reducing functions. The report mentions that, "based on international and local experience, the number of ministries could be reduced from 25 to 16, plus a minister without portfolio in charge of the government's spokesperson role" (see table). The economist Jorge Rodríguez explains this latter figure: "It is a full minister, with a voice in the political committee, but without the bureaucratic burden of administering a ministry. The spokesperson role is a strategic and essentially political function. Freeing it from managing a structure allows it to focus on coordinating and communicating the government's project and narrative." Among the main changes in this area, according to the proposal, the Science, Culture and Sport portfolios disappear as independent ministries. Instead, a ministry of Education, Childhood, Youth, Culture and Sports is established, and another of Higher Education, Science, Technology and Innovation. In addition, the ministries of Public Works, Housing and Urbanism, Transport and Telecommunications, and National Assets are unified. And also the current portfolios of Economy and Mining, and Agriculture, and those of Energy and the Environment. The report mentions that "if the proposed mergers are carried out, they must aim for each ministry to be a single legal, operational and budgetary entity, avoiding duplicating the back office administrative support (administration, finance, IT and auditing) for each sectoral issue. This is possible under conditions such as the homogeneity of operational processes, the existence of synergies in procurement and investment, and the compatibility of organizational culture and technological complexity." 30-09-2026
JORGE RODRIGUEZ
PHOTO: PEDRO RODRIGUEZ PEDRO RODRIGUEZ The analysis states that "Chile is the second OECD member country with the most ministries, behind only Israel. The trend in those countries is toward merging rather than dividing them. However, it is an illusion to believe that merely restructuring the cabinet solves the problems of coordination between institutions or within them." Regarding the innovation of splitting the Ministry of Education in two, Alfonso España explains it this way: "There are two ministries because they are two worlds, with different audiences and different agendas. In a single one, schooling tends to dominate the agenda, relegating higher education. Separated, one ministry can focus on the classroom as the axis of an integrated offering for childhood and adolescence, while the other articulates higher education with science and innovation as the engine of development." The CEP's work delves into the reason this measure is proposed: "In the international experience analyzed, it was observed that higher education tended to have its own ministry, as did childhood, youth and education. Higher education operates with different logics from those of school and preschool education. It does not manage curricula, teaching staff or education assistants." Likewise, they explain that "its agenda, that of higher education, consists of the relationship with state universities, the Council of Rectors and private institutions; the administration and evaluation of free tuition, loans and scholarships; and quality assurance. A minister in charge of both worlds tends to neglect one of them, and in general it is school education, due to its scale and conflict, that absorbs the agenda." Structure and coordination A second proposal aims to give governments greater flexibility to adjust the structure of the State to emerging problems and priorities, avoiding the need for a complete organic reform for each adjustment. To this end, the CEP analysis proposes three measures. First, authorize the President of the Republic, in the first months of his term, to issue decrees with the force of law that modify the number and name of ministries and undersecretariats, as well as the dependency of services, with safeguards for civil servants and to avoid increases in spending or duplication of functions. Second, allow service heads to manage the internal organization of their entities within a predetermined budget and staffing framework, and third, include figures such as ministers without portfolio with coordination roles. The proposal requires a constitutional reform. 12/03/2026 - SEBASTIAN IZQUIERDO. Photo: Mario Tellez MARIO TELLEZ A third proposal is to improve interministerial coordination tools as a complement to eventual State reorganization processes. "Collaboration agreements, the programmatic coordination of the Interministerial Coordination Division (DCI), thematic cabinets, interministerial committees, transversal budget programming and the creation of coordinating agencies can address a good part of coordination problems at lower costs than a merger or a restructuring requiring a legal change. To these can be added the designation of coordinating ministers for related areas," follows from the CEP report. The fourth proposal is to establish measurable objectives and evaluation criteria for each ministerial or service merger. "If a ministerial merger is carried out, the expected results must be established, and these must be monitored and evaluated against a prior baseline," they state. And they add that each merger must be evaluated according to at least four criteria. The first is that the portfolios share a target population or policy instruments, so that there are today coordination problems that the merger can correct. The second is the separation between promotion and oversight: the merger must not bring together in the same authority functions that should remain separate or, if it does, it must include sufficient institutional safeguards. The third is a manageable scope of control: the resulting ministry must be able to be led by a single minister. And the fourth is the alignment between an agenda for State modernization, powers and responsibilities: the new structure must give whoever is politically accountable for a result the means to achieve it. End of career staff, contracts and fees The fifth proposal is to establish a single civil service career for public employment, replacing the current system fragmented among career staff (planta), contracts (contrata) and fees (honorarios). "These measures must cover both central government civil servants and municipal ones," they propose. Regarding entry, the proposal states that the model requires a competitive and transparent selection process for every hiring of people in the public administration. "The existence of a career implies that civil servants can grow professionally within the institution or within the public sector as a whole, with both vertical and horizontal mobility. Complementarily, a more flexible clause must be established for the termination of personnel when service needs require it, avoiding arbitrariness by limiting the number of times it can be used per year, requiring that it be based on the good, timely and efficient functioning of the service on the basis of a report from a second-level manager," the report indicates. The sixth proposal is to establish that positions of lesser political exposure subject to the Senior Public Management System cannot be removed without the agreement of the Senior Public Management Council, to reduce the high turnover they have shown so far, which harms good management. Juan Luis Ossa. Photo: CEP. The seventh is to accelerate the processing of the creation of an Agency for the Quality of Public Policies and Productivity that evaluates ex ante and ex post the design and results of public policies. The eighth proposal is to integrate data on spending and staffing, today dispersed among the Budget Directorate, the Comptroller General of the Republic, Active Transparency and the National Municipal Information System. "This information must be publicly accessible and include, among other elements relevant for accountability, payments made by the State to individuals, their employment relationship, the amount and payment of overtime hours, per diems, seniority, position, staff category and grade on the unified salary scale. The integration must include municipalities and regional governments," according to the CEP analysis. The ninth is to encourage the efficient use of subsidies for work incapacity. To this end, progress must be made on approving the bill that improves it, which addresses matters related to its duration and oversight. Alfonso España, CEP researcher And the tenth is to create a Judicial Appointments Council that privileges merit and raises the costs of capture. "The Council must be a collegiate body, not too numerous, with a majority of members from the judiciary, capable of adequately weighing the merits of candidates. The constitutional reform under way that modifies the governance of the judiciary and creates the Judicial Appointments Council moves in this direction." Sebastián Izquierdo, who also worked on this study, highlights four mutually reinforcing measures: "Better interministerial coordination, a civil service career that supersedes the Administrative Statute, less political turnover in the Senior Public Management System, and the Agency for the Quality of Public Policies, already in the Senate." Are you already a subscriber? Log in This article is exclusive to subscribers Subscribe to read it in full and access all our journalism. See plans