We are used to seeing, at the beginning of any legislature, everything happen as quickly as possible, from decisions to works and from renovations to inaugurations. It is a time of political euphoria, in which speed is confused with merit and prudence with immobility. The current government is once again faced with the dilemma of how to accelerate the State without making it invisible.
The dispute between the Government and the Court of Auditors is just the most visible reflection of this tension between haste and guarantee, between political urgency and democratic solidity. The Minister of State Reform accuses the Court of Auditors of “substituting itself for political power”, while the president responded clearly, that it is precisely on the Court’s intervention that the financial credibility of the State depends, as control is not the opposite of governance, it is its condition.
What Portugal needs is not less control, but better control. A good bureaucracy, which is one that protects the public interest with clear rules, traceability and transparency. It is urgent to distinguish between control that guarantees trust and useless paperwork that only delays processes without adding value to them. Good bureaucracy must be accelerated and dematerialized with interoperable digital processes, while bad bureaucracy must be simply eliminated.
There are worrying signs that the “efficiency” discourse is beginning to serve as a pretext for the erosion of administrative and legal guarantees. The Code of Administrative Procedure, which enshrines fundamental principles such as citizen participation, motivation for actions and the right to information, has been the target of criticism and attempts at “simplification” that sound like dismantling. Under the pretext of modernization, the heart of the administrative Rule of Law is threatened. Reforming is necessary, however, reforming in a hurry, in the name of efficiency, is very dangerous.
The modernization of the State is not achieved by cutting oversight powers or melting down guarantees in the name of speed. It is done by linking systems and wills, with interoperability between bodies and control bodies, such as the Court of Auditors, inspections and public scrutiny on the Mais Transparência Portal. It is this intelligent network that can make scrutiny more agile without making it blind.
Internal control is the first line of defense for public integrity and has been systematically undervalued. General inspections, internal audits and verification mechanisms have lost means and political relevance. When the State stops monitoring itself, external control always arrives too late and becomes the enemy of public authorities.
External control, ensured by the Court of Auditors, is the second shield, independent, technical and cumbersome, as it should be. Reducing its scope is opening the way to opacity and arbitrariness. And there is still a third pillar, often forgotten, which is active transparency.
In a context where political power is increasingly permeable to the influence of large multinationals and economic lobbies, transparency is not a virtue, it is a democratic necessity. Making data, contracts and financial flows public should not be an act of goodwill, but an obligation. It’s not enough to answer when they ask, you need to show them before they ask.
Democracy lives on light. And light comes from internal, external and public scrutiny. To weaken any of these pillars is to weaken the State itself.
The challenge is not to end bureaucracy, it is to accelerate the good and abolish the bad. A State that monitors and explains itself is a stronger, more transparent and more trustworthy State. Because good bureaucracy, like seat belts, may be annoying, but it is what prevents disaster.
E-governance specialist