2025 - Edition 78 | August 19

The Institute organized inputs, activities, products and results, strengthening the integration between policies and reducing the fragmentation of actions

Hello Leitor,

IMDS's technical work appears to have significantly influenced the final design of a new public policy of the government of São Paulo, within the scope of a Technical Cooperation Agreement (TCA) signed in June 2024. In this context, the Productive Inclusion and Employability Policy for Economic Development was launched last month, coordinated by the Secretariat of Economic Development (SDE). The initiative brings together an articulated set of guidelines and instruments to promote decent and sustainable income generation, expand job opportunities and boost local economic development, with special attention to audiences in situations of socioeconomic vulnerability. The objective of the TCA was to build and strengthen a policy of productive inclusion and employability based on evidence and oriented towards the monitoring of concrete results.

IMDS organized inputs, activities, products, and expected results in a clear intervention logic, strengthening the integration between policies and reducing the fragmentation of actions. The methodology included literature review, evidence analysis, interviews with managers and technicians from the different sub-secretariats and workshops, ensuring that the design of the policy was anchored in technical knowledge and, at the same time, informed by the practical experience of public management. This work articulated different action strategies, which materialized in the decree in the form of specific objectives and instruments, ensuring that the final text presented a cohesive, integrated, and result-oriented intervention logic.

The official text of the policy establishes principles such as the democratization of access to professional development opportunities and the generation of employment and income, intergovernmental integration, social participation and the promotion of socioeconomic equity. Among its objectives, the reduction of economic vulnerability indices through structured and continuous actions to generate work and income stand out; the articulation of strategies for productive inclusion and employability with the characteristics and potential of the territories; the promotion of sustainable economic development; and the encouragement of the formalization of informal activities. The policy also provides for the strengthening of professional and entrepreneurial qualification, aligning training content with market demands and regional specificities, as well as expanding access to productive inclusion services by different means — face-to-face, remote or hybrid.

Another central point is the definition of priority groups, reinforcing the commitment to reducing inequalities and expand opportunities for those that face more severe barriers to access work. Among them are people with low education, young people between 18 and 29 years of age who neither study nor work, women heads of household, non-white [black, brown, indigenous and quilombolas (communities founded by runaway slaves)], elderly people looking for professional replacement, people with disabilities, workers dismissed without just cause or rescued from conditions analogous to slavery, former prisoners and socio-educational workers, as well as women in situation of domestic violence.

To achieve its objectives, the policy has a set of strategic instruments. One of them is professional and entrepreneurial qualification, which includes courses, workshops, mentoring and learning trails aligned with market demands and regional economic vocations. In this axis, the Professional Qualification Forum stands out as a consultative body, bringing together different state secretariats and entities of the S-System to articulate, plan and evaluate training offers. The Forum seeks to enhance free qualification offers, expanding, diversifying and publicizing courses: to ensure that the contents are aligned with the demands of the productive sector and regional specificities; to stimulate the construction of joint agendas and methodologies, defining priorities, goals and actions for the provision of qualifications; to monitor and evaluate the strategies implemented; and to produce applied knowledge through studies, diagnoses and sectoral and territorial analyses.

Another important instrument is the Pact for Productive Inclusion and Employability, a voluntary membership mechanism that promotes a collaborative, integrated and innovative environment to expand job, income and qualification opportunities in all regions of the state. In it, public and private organizations assume commitments such as offering job and apprenticeship vacancies, designing training aligned with the market, and the mobilization of people in vulnerable situations.

The policy also institutes the Trampoline Program, an integrative digital platform that concentrates, in a single environment, services and opportunities offered by the government, the private sector and civil society organizations. The tool expands the population's qualified access to job vacancies, training courses and professional development content. With features based on artificial intelligence and support for digital inclusion, the platform also allows the monitoring of indicators and data in real time, strengthening the governance and transparency of the policy.

The decree innovates by adopting territorial intelligence and innovation strategies to align professional qualification and employability actions with the specific demands of each territory, promoting a culture of evidence-based management. To achieve this objective, it includes the implementation of systems and practices for collecting, cross-checking, visualizing and analyzing data related to employment, professional training, regional development and the profile of the public served, thus strengthening data-driven public policies. A network of data and information on productive inclusion and employability will also be established, with the objective of integrating, systematizing, updating and making available qualified information on policies, programs, services, initiatives, audiences served, territories and results in the State of São Paulo.

In the process of elaborating the policy, IMDS acted as a technical partner, contributing to making its conception more coherent, integrated, and result oriented. By systematizing the elements that compose it and proposing a logical chain between actions and expected impacts, the theory of change provided the basis for transforming guidelines and intentions into a structured plan, with well-defined instruments and monitoring mechanisms. This experience reinforces the value of institutional partnerships that combine technical capacity for analysis and evaluation with the practical experience of public management and reaffirms IMDS's commitment to strengthening public policies aimed at expanding opportunities and promoting social mobility.

See you in the next "IMDS Letter"!

Paulo Tafner

CEO