The Government of the Generalitat has recently submitted to Parliament the bill on professional public management, an initiative that constitutes a critical and determining pillar for the transformation of our Administration. It is very possible that this reform will not have the media impact of other legislative initiatives. However, its rigorous application can significantly impact the efficiency of the institutional apparatus and the real improvement of public services. The principle that inspires this reform is to establish a clear line of demarcation between political responsibility and professional management responsibility.In any consolidated democratic system, it legitimately falls to governments to determine the country's political priorities and roadmap. The president and their ministers must be able to choose their main political advisors to define the government program, interpret society's changing demands, design public policies, and allocate budgetary resources to them. This political decision-making function is not only fully legitimate but also entirely indispensable for democratic functioning.A very different question, however, is who should assume the executive direction necessary to translate these political priorities into concrete results. Leading highly complex public organizations today, administering collective economic resources, leading multidisciplinary human teams, driving digital transformation processes, or evaluating the real impact of policies requires very specific technical knowledge, experience, and managerial competencies. For this reason, a very substantial part of the current management positions in the Generalitat and its institutional public sector should cease to depend on political trust or free appointment to be filled through public, transparent, and competitive procedures. The bill foresees that future regulatory development will set the criteria for delimiting which positions correspond to political responsibility and which should be strictly reserved for professionals. It is not about depoliticizing government action, but about professionalizing the management of the Administration in a stable and permanent manner.
This debate has often been presented as a false confrontation between politics and management. It is not. An administration of excellence requires good political direction and good executive direction. They are conceptually different but complementary functions. This model is not a Catalan singularity or an isolated experiment. It responds to the principles that for decades have guided the modernization of the most advanced public administrations in Europe. The work of the SIGMA initiative – the EU and OECD program specializing in improving public governance – insists on these axes: selection based on merit, political neutrality, transparency in procedures, technical capacity, and direct responsibility for achieved results.The project will structure two levels of professional management and will entrust the evaluation of candidates to an independent body that will propose the most suitable profiles. The political authority will maintain the final designation capacity, but this decision will be limited to a shortlist of people who have previously demonstrated their competence. Likewise, temporary mandates of seven years – renewable – are established to provide management with stability beyond electoral cycles, linking continuity and part of the variable remuneration to an evaluation of performance and the achievement of objectives.However, it is important not to idealize the reform. The approval of the legislative text will be just the first step in a profound cultural change that faces three main challenges. 1) The credibility of the model: meritocracy is not proclaimed, but must be verifiable. If society perceives that the new mechanisms are a facade to maintain partisan quotas, the reform will fail. 2) The ability to attract talent in competition with the private sector, which will require agile selection procedures, real management autonomies, and adequate remuneration structures. 3) The demand for indispensable public values such as ethics, transparency, equity, and the defense of the general interest.The initial application to the Generalitat and its public sector is a prudent decision to evaluate the results before extending the model to the entire Catalan public sector and local government. Catalonia has the opportunity to drive a long-demanded state reform. Having a professional, competent public leadership evaluated by its results does not favor a particular government: it strengthens our institutions and guarantees quality services.
