The Pending Reform: Between Will and Political Intent
The urgency of reform
Once duplication and waste are clearly identified, the central question remains why nothing changes.
This is where political dysfunction emerges. Fear of losing votes or confronting unions outweighs the well-being of the citizens who finance the system. The paralysis is not technical. It is political.
The cost of inaction
Ignacio Munyo warns that time is running out.
A State that wastes resources on unnecessary agencies is a State unable to invest in quality education, modern infrastructure, or productive innovation. The ultimate deception lies in believing that a solid welfare State can be sustained on an administrative foundation that is inefficient, bloated, and hollow.
State reform is not a matter of left or right. It is a matter of intellectual honesty. When every serious technical analysis confirms that certain structures are redundant, maintaining them becomes a deliberate decision to waste collective effort.
The transparency advocated by institutions such as CERES is the antidote to deception. An informed citizen, aware that their money finances phantom offices or duplicated functions, can begin to demand genuine accountability.
Conclusion: A broken social contract
The social contract breaks when what the State collects bears no relation to what it delivers.
Waste is not merely an accounting error. It is an ethical failure. Uruguay still has the opportunity to use these diagnoses to trim bureaucracy, release productive energy, and rebuild trust.
The path forward is defined by efficiency, digitalization, and the political courage to shut down what no longer works.
Reform guide: Against waste and institutional deception
This guide outlines the necessary actions to align what the State collects with what it actually delivers, eliminating structures designed solely to consume budgetary resources.
Institutional efficiency
The goal is to end the metastasis of agencies performing identical functions. Merging executive units would consolidate scattered policies under a single technical authority per sector. A national single-window system would eliminate the absurd role of citizens as messengers between offices. A relevance audit would test every national department. If eliminating it does not directly affect an essential service, it should be closed.
Fiscal transparency
Citizens must know exactly where every dollar goes. Zero-based budgeting in critical areas would end automatic, unjustified increases. Separating tariffs from tax collection would prevent public utilities from acting as covert tax collectors. Publishing the real cost per service would expose how much is lost to avoidable bureaucracy.
Technological modernization
Bureaucratic inertia must be replaced by data-driven processes. Mandatory digitalization, artificial intelligence applied to procurement oversight, and functional mobility of public employees would address administrative dysfunction without destroying human capital.
To understand how to escape this cycle, Uruguay should look to small countries that successfully broke free from bureaucratic deception. Estonia and New Zealand offer uncomfortable but necessary benchmarks.