Learning, capacity-building and training centre
Each year, ILPES offers a wide variety of fully or partially attendance-based and distance-learning courses, which cater to direct demand from the countries and meet the varied needs of the member States of the region. Part of its mission as the key ECLAC body responsible for training is to disseminate ECLAC thinking, analysis and ideas. In so doing it provides support to institutions and (national and subnational) government agencies, academic establishments (universities and research and teaching networks) and various stakeholders (the State, society, government, trade unions, and institutions across the world) in public policymaking (at State level and with national and subnational plans and programmes) with a long-term vision (sustainability).
The overriding objective of the courses offered by the Institute is to develop the skills of the public officials of the countries of the region by delivering methodologies, tools and best practices for designing, planning and assessing public policies and programmes.
The Institute’s range of courses encompasses various modules on the areas in which it works, such as development planning, development paradigms and models, forecasting and building long-term visions, formulating and assessing public investment programmes and projects, logical frameworks, budgetary policies and results-based public administration, open government, competitiveness and territorial development.
Advisory services, technical cooperation and promoting networks of practice and knowledge
ILPES provides governments in Latin America and the Caribbean with advisory services and technical assistance to strengthen their capacities for planning and public administration for development. The Institute offers special services for ministries of planning and equivalent bodies in such areas as preparing, monitoring and evaluating investment projects and preparing and following up on strategic plans. ILPES conducts workshops and provides advisory services at the request of governments in fields concerning development planning and management.
ILPES also provides a forum bringing together planners from throughout Latin America and the Caribbean. In addition to providing attendance-based and online courses for some 2,000 people a year, the Institute organizes seminars, meetings, virtual networks and other gatherings of specialists. These events contribute to the creation of human, individual, collective and institutional capacities that set up or strengthen processes to improve the quality of public administration for development.
Research, publications and a source of knowledge on planning
ILPES produces a variety of documents targeting different audiences and fulfilling a range of functions: institutional publications of ECLAC, books, working papers, project documents and external publications in books and magazines under the names of individual authors. More than 70 documents were published between 2008 and 2014. In addition to printed matter, ILPES publishes via other media, including compact discs, electronic newsletters and databases on its website. It is currently in the process of establishing a digital planning repository of development plans, programmes and agendas from throughout the region. A distinctive feature of many of these publications is that they contain international comparative analysis that provides an overview of the Latin American and Caribbean region.
One key publication is a public management overview in Latin America and the Caribbean (entitled Panorama de la Gestión Pública en América Latina y el Caribe), which reviews public finances and budgetary policies in the region, gives details of national systems for financial administration, public investment and results-based budgeting and reports on the emergence of new governance initiatives, particularly in relation to the revival of comprehensive development planning.
In 2010 the Institute added a second key publication: a territorial development overview (entitled Panorama del Desarrollo Territorial en América Latina y el Caribe), which focuses on the geography of social and economic gaps in Latin America and the Caribbean. This report provides a multidimensional approach to the measurement of territorial disparities and an analysis of the policies and institutions in the countries of the region that promote a more geographically balanced development, and outlines the challenges that regional development policies must overcome to achieve structural change and equality.