Reinventing the government in Guanajuato, Mexico: An interview with Governor Vicente Fox Quesada.

• Author: Reyes, Jorge
• Position: Interview

After two and a half years of his administration, Governor of the State of Guanajuato Vicente Fox Quesada reviews some of the most important information technology (IT) implementations carried out in the state in this interview with Gobierno Digital (Digital Government).

Q: What are your government's goals and how can technology help achieve them?

A: In Guanajuato we have a very clear goal as it was determined by Guanajuato's people: to make our state a land of opportunities. That implies leaving behind paternalism, to go fully into a new government-society relationship where the government supplies opportunities and society responds with responsibility to those opportunities.

In order to achieve this goal, we have very clearly stated five challenges: economic development, social development, educational transformation, law abiding state, and good government. Among the priorities that the citizens have set to us, there is the need for an effective, talented, modern, and technological government - in short, a less costly government capable of doing more. Here is where technology fully fits in.

I think the revolutionary changes we have seen in the last five years, in terms of information handling and communications, are incredible. In Guanajuato, we have been intensively working on reinventing the government. Our first plan is to cut by 40 percent the size and the cost of government by the year 2000. These kinds of challenges are only possible with a technological revolution as our foundation.

In the state government we already have installed an information network, through which all agencies and departments are in permanent communication. This network is extended with branches to each of the 46 municipalities, thus integrating them to the state's information network. We have no confidential data, no facts to hide; the public accounts, incomes, expenses, the civil servants' salaries, the governor's capital assets - everything is disclosed through this network. I say this because other states should think that concerning the municipalities there has to be some degree of confidentiality; in Guanajuato that is not the case: information is totally open to municipalities.

What have we achieved with this? We have enabled all state and local government officials to be up-to-date in order to make well sustained decisions. This has been one of the intense uses of technology. Another is our state information institute, called INFO, which is our local...