The President of the Independent Authority for Fiscal Responsibility (AIReF), Cristina Herrero, gave a presentation today as part of the second edition of the Gaspar Casal Foundation’s Executive Programme on Value-Based Healthcare Management. Her presentation focused on the importance of strengthening public leadership as a driver of organisational transformation and the push towards more innovative institutions, such as AIReF.
During her speech, Cristina Herrero addressed the origin and evolution of AIReF, which was created with the initial function of a fiscal supervisor and, since 2017, has incorporated the function of public policy evaluation. The President highlighted the importance of the European context in AIReF’s trajectory, together with the importance of exercising leadership committed to serving society as a whole and being open to the constant updating of organisations.
Cristina Herrero underlined four distinctive features that define the AIReF model: independence, transparency, rigour and usefulness. AIReF is a fully independent institution that does not receive instructions from the Government, is self-financed, is committed to accountability and pursues a communication policy based on maximum transparency.
In addition, it carries out rigorous data-based analyses, ensures secure data processing (it is certified in accordance with the National Security Scheme) and publishes them on its website, where it also discloses its methodologies. As examples of transparent methodologies, she referred to recent publications such as the Report on the Monitoring of the Medium-Term Structural-Fiscal Plan (MTP) and the Second Opinion on the Sustainability of the General Government (GG).
During her presentation, the President also reviewed various evaluations carried out by AIReF in the health sector, both within the framework of the Spending Review —commissioned by the Government at the initiative of the European Commission — and at the request of several Autonomous Regions (ARs). Specifically, she reviewed some of the studies and results on prescription drugs, hospital spending on pharmaceuticals and capital goods, and evaluations of human resources in healthcare commissioned by the ARs of Extremadura, the Balearic Islands and Navarre. The President also took the opportunity to present some of the results of the study on the public-servant mutual insurance system published in March this year as an example of AIReF’s quest for effective and efficient evaluations.
