Distance education as a knowledge management tool in the Ministry of Finance

Abstract

With the increasing growth of the New Communication and Information technologies and the frequent need for training and improvement of the workers due to, among other reasons, to globalization and internationalization of Knowledge, the governments have been applying use more and more means and educational technics in order to raise the intellectual level of their servants. After the end of bureaucratic administration model, when the means were more important than the purposes and the necessity of a managerial administration whose main goal is to deliver a most responsible and qualified service and thus modernize the public machine, the Distance Learning has been a great ally in the training and development process, acting in a vast area where the notion of distance take on a new perspective enabling actors in different places of our continental nation to feel increasingly closer. In this new scenario before us, new concepts as Open University, Progressive Learning, Virtual Corporation come together to join others as Knowledge Management and challenge the public and private organizations to get more and more involved in a permanent process of readaptation and renewal in order to keep it alive and relevant. Researching on the impact of distance courses over public servants, it has been perceived how this teaching-learning modality has influenced the job relations and changed an old culture where the traditional learning was the only possibility to provide growth and development to collaborators of an institution. The increasing use of Distance Learning by the Ministry of Finance through the Finance Administration School is a proof that Brazilian Public Administration has demonstrated attention to every new possibility with which we can improve the government structure.