Startup GOV.BR includes innovations in its design, purpose and management process. Inspired by agile models from the private sector, the Program was created to support digital projects, aiming to fill the capacity gaps and to promote a cultural shift in public sector.

To manage the Program, a unit at SGD was created to act as the intelligence center of the Program, intervening quickly when necessary, escalating the issues to the competent authorities, dealing with bureaucratic procedures, managing a flexible UX team, and expanding the improvements and learnings to the portfolio.

The Program is based on practices and routines of startups and seeks to apply them in an inaugural way in government projects in various sectors. It is also similar to initiatives for the acceleration or incubation of nascent ventures. Thus, the Startup GOV.BR Program has incentivized the startup culture within the federal government and generated an important cultural legacy.

Startup GOV.BR is at the stage of implementation. Since 2021, more than 30 cross-cutting projects with many federal agencies from various sectors have been supported. The Program focuses on initiatives with significant number of beneficiaries, potential for economic or social development, or substantial savings to the public budget.

Currently, the Startup GOV.BR program has 30 projects in portfolio in the following stages: 15 are in operation phase (when the solution is available to users); 9 are in development phase (when they are developing the solution, based on agile methods, and with the possibility to start operation in 2022); 6 are in the diagnostic phase (when they are designing the project, and which precedes the developing stage).

Strategies for making the solution available to the population can include pilots with a limited audience, release of incremental modules with tests and continuous improvement until the solution is delivered in its full version.

Startup GOV.BR has governance rules and procedures that include the Ministry of Economy (SGD) and the Presidency (SEME) supporting the projects from the beginning to end. The projects are presented by the federal agencies and go through executive meetings with a committee formed by SGD, SEME and the requesting agency.

During the development phase of the projects, research and tests are carried out with users, organisations and stakeholders involved in the sector, which may vary greatly.

The Startup GOV.BR Program aims to support federal government agencies that have strategic digital transformation projects and which do not have the capacity to fully develop them without the support and guidance of central agencies.

By providing this support, Startup GOV.BR have reached millions of Brazilian citizens and companies that interact with the federal government and have benefited them with higher quality services.

More than 30 projects with important impacts on society and economy, have been supported by the Program. Among them are:

• Digital ID and its new features
• GOV.BR portal, with recommendations and other features
• Sou GOV.BR application – relationship platform with civil servants
• Super GOV.BR solution – process and document management platform
• the new app and portal of Single Registry for social benefits
• Student's Journey app
• the Inclusion Registry – unification of databases on people with disabilities for benefits,
• Paperless Port system and the Electronic Transport Document (DTe) – both related to the simplification of journeys in the infrastructure sector,
• Electronic Prescription of Medicines, and others.

In addition, the culture change promoted in supported agencies is a breakthrough. The focus on results, quick deliveries with continuous improvement, prioritization of users' experience and agile management are significant legacies for public sector.

Considering its innovative character, great challenges presented throughout the implementation of the Program, but three were the major ones.

• The first challenge was the provision of technical capacity for the projects. Ministry of Economy intended to hire 350 IT professionals. However, the vacancies were not fully filled and the evasion of hired professionals remains strong. Dealing with it has demanded flexibility and intelligence in the management of the Program to keep its deliveries in short term and in the due quality.
• The second challenge was to create an efficient governance to monitor many projects in various agencies. It was necessary to create a new unit, which started with few professionals and had to evolve quickly along with the execution of the Program.
• The last challenge relates to difficulties some agencies had to operate in an agile basis. A couple of projects had to be suspended mainly because the agencies could not perform with the expected agility.

Many factors contributed to the success of the Program.

• The first refers to the selection process. It included: (i) objective criteria, including potential impacts and beneficiaries; (ii) the structure of the project, with deliveries aligned to resources; (iii) the choice of dedicated technical leaders.
• The second refers to the human resources model, which included the allocation of multidisciplinary teams to the projects. It contributed to the agile management and focused on generating value for users.
• The third was the governance involving the agency, SEME and SGD. It brought not only new professionals and support for project management, but also a monitoring process that helped to strengthen the commitment to the project execution.
• The last factor refers to the capacity and resilience of the professionals, teams and leaders involved. They showed capacity to work according to the new model and to collaborate for its continuous improvement, which was pivotal to the success.

Startup GOV.BR was designed and applied to Brazilian federal government and has not been replicated to other contexts yet. However, it has potential to be replicated or to inspire other initiatives that aims to adopt agile methodologies to public sector, specially to digital solutions development.

The Program has been continuously improved and can be expanded at federal level in Brazil too. It can also be a model to other subnational initiatives as well as international ones.

At the beginning of the Program, allocated professionals should work exclusively on the projects. However, with the shortage of skilled labour, adjustments were necessary. Now some professionals work on more than one project or on specific demand, migrating to another project or demand as soon as the task is completed.

To enable this optimization of resources, the flexible, fast and smart performance of the Coordination that monitors and manages the Startup GOV.BR project portfolio has become even more essential.

Ultimately, the Program brought important lessons about using agile methodologies at public sector. In a short period, dozens of federal agencies were stimulated to adopt a new approach to develop digital solutions. Even though it was necessary to orchestrate a complex set of resources to do so, Startup GOV.BR demonstrated that agile methodologies helped to accelerate the rhythm of solution development and to improve the quality of deliveries.

As additional information, SGD continues to provide and improve technological resources through centralized tools that enable the digital transformation of the federal government, including for Startup GOV.BR projects. Among these tools are the GOV.BR single login, the electronic signature, the various APIs that enable data interoperability between different agencies and systems, etc. These tools are generally made available free of charge to federal agencies and SGD manages centralized contracts with technology providers.

Furthermore, the Startup GOV.BR Program does not have specific budgetary or financial resources for its execution. The support includes the allocation of personnel, methodological support, and technological tools already available to all agencies. The Program support does not replace specific software development contracts, nor does it involve the transfer of budgetary or financial resources between the agencies.