The public administration’s ‘engine room’ in the fight against COVID-19

Abstract

The fight against the COVID-19 pandemic in Brazil requires integrated and coordinated strategies and actions involving different public policy agencies in the local, state, and federal governments, delivering essential services and emergency programs. Such services rely on public administration’s functional areas, designated in this work as the “engine room.” The study uses this particular intra-organizational dimension to describe and analyze the administrative functions in the adjustment of the death care services in a municipality, as the final link in the fight against the SARS-CoV-2. The empirical locus is the death care service of São Paulo, Brazil. The service was chosen because it is a public sector monopoly and São Paulo because of the municipality’s size - one of the biggest in the world. The research adopted documentary analysis and interviews with local public managers, examining the back office of public administration focusing on finance, human resources, processes and information technology, procurement and contracts, logistics and operations, and communication and marketing. The study discusses the mechanisms of public organizations in the context of the pandemic. It leads to a reflection on the key points of such a health crisis considering different realities, recognizing the limits of analyzing an ongoing phenomenon.

Keywords:
COVID-19; public management; intra-organizational dimension; functional areas; death care