Planning for development in the 60 years of ILPES

During this period, the general objective of ILPES courses is to strengthen the capacity, skills, and applied knowledge (competencies) of public officials in the countries of the region through three learning modalities. The first is "structured knowledge", a modality widely used in post-university adult education, and generally consists of teaching methodologies, tools and best practices for the design, programming and evaluation of public policies and programs. To achieve this goal, courses are designed to combine weeks of lectures with workshops. This allows - and at the same time facilitates - the assimilation of conceptual, theoretical, or analytical frameworks and the development of criteria and the application of techniques and instruments through systematic group workshops, usually using case studies. The second modality of "peer to peer" learning through the development of collective skills and the exchange of experiences. The diversity of nationalities present in all courses, and the extensive professional experience as public officials, is an ideal combination to encourage the exchange of knowledge and experiences. The third modality is distance learning, where structured face-to-face learning is combined with distance learning (blended learning). This third modality began to be implemented before the COVID 19 pandemic and allowed ILPES to add value to its training offer through the levelling of knowledge and/or the introduction to cross-cutting issues in distance mode, prior to the face-to-face experience of learning-by-doing of the course itself.

In this regard, ILPES' training approach today combines the transmission of academic knowledge derived from bibliographical readings; inputs produced by research conducted by other ECLAC divisions and by the Institute itself; the use of resources derived from case studies in which the ILPES team has participated; and the transmission and implementation of methodologies and the acquisition of tools for development management.

In the regional context of the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the governments of the region made new demands on ILPES to support their public management processes, as well as the formulation and evaluation of public policies. In the context of the debate on the new role that the State should assume to promote the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the training requests received by ILPES have emphasized the need for new planning and public management tools, such as foresight, results-based management for development, citizen participation, open government and territorial competitiveness, as well as new analytical and methodological frameworks to strengthen the institutional capacities of the governments of the region. In this sense, new training courses have been developed for capacity building as well as relevant topics related to the demands of planning and managing sustainable and inclusive development, such as participation, transparency and accountability; gender perspective, inclusiveness and human rights in the design of development programs and projects; digital government, foresight and new leadership, among others.

During this period, the Network of Planning for Development in Latin America and the Caribbean was also launched, which arose from the need of course participants to maintain contact once the training activities were completed, both to promote the application of the knowledge that students gained from the courses and to maintain dialogue and networks of former students, thereby promoting peer-to-peer learning.

The Institute also drew on more than a decade of experience in distance education to develop and implement a distance training offer during the years of the COVID 19 pandemic, responding to the demands of the countries during this period.