PDDE Interativo: a consolidação de um gerencialismo digital interfederativo?

Abstract

This study is part of the “State, Policies, and Education Management” research area of the Graduate Program in Education at the Federal University of Uberlândia. In recent historical developments, managerialism and New Public Management (NPM) have come to shape the dynamics of the Brazilian state, while technology has emerged as a central mediating force in the organization of contemporary management. In this context, the interplay between these elements within the sphere of state activities has given rise to new intergovernmental relationships, new management models, and distinct patterns of interaction among federal entities. In this sense, through dialectical historical materialism, this thesis sought to understand the implications of the use of digital technologies in the field of educational and school management, using the PDDE Interativo tool, analyzing how these technologies reinforce managerialist practices and establish a new type of collaborative relationship within the framework of the federal pact. To this end, we employed five analytical categories, encompassing the entirety of the research object: federalism, collaborative regime, managerialism, technology, and contradiction. Accordingly, the empirical research was conducted in three municipalities in Bahia’s Southern Coastal Identity Territory, namely: Itabuna, Canavieiras, and Almadina, with the aim of understanding how, in different locations, school management is shaped by these categories. In this process, in addition to document analysis, we used questionnaires and interviews as research tools for data collection, with the PDDE Interativo digital platform serving as the central reference point. The analyzed data indicate that the PDDE (Direct Money for Schools Program) and the PDDE Interativo digital platform are perceived as a single entity by the participants. The use of the platform, while facilitating school management processes, also bureaucratizes them. Despite advances in digital inclusion policies for schools, access is still inadequate for use in the schools surveyed. The resources provided by the programs on the platform, although considered of fundamental importance, have their effectiveness limited by the regulations and managerialism inherent in the platform, which ultimately prevents schools from exercising their full autonomy. The use of the PDDE Interativo platform in the management of Brazilian public schools, within the studied context, highlights the establishment of a new, verticalized, inter-federal relationship format, diluting or even eliminating the participation of other federal entities in the management of programs originating from the Ministry of Education (MEC). In this sense, by combining digital technologies with a managerial model derived from the School Development Program (PDE-Escola), the federal government has developed a new form of management and control, which we refer to here as Interfederative Digital Managerialism (GDI). Finally, the thesis argues that this process consolidates an Interfederative Digital Managerialism, in which the federal government governs remotely through norms, metrics, and conditionalities embedded in the platform, transforming collaboration into operational compliance. Empirically, collaboration does not take the form of a horizontal political practice, but rather of subordinate technical cooperation, characterized by standardization, reduced school autonomy, and technological dependence. In this context, technology functions as a political mediator of control, reshaping the federal pact through the discursive framework of cooperation.