IRIS Participation in the Startup Public Policy Forum in Minas Gerais

On November 25, 2016, happened the last phase of the Startup Public Policy Forum promoted by the Legislative Assembly of Minas Gerais (one of the 27 brazilian states). This public event aimed to collect proposals from private sector, academia and civil society in order to build a public policy to expand our state’s startup ecosystem. In this post we will briefly describe how the bill was developed and  how was the participation of the Institute for Research in Internet and Society (IRIS).

How things have started

In the first half of 2016 two state assemblyman, Antônio Carlos Arantes and Dalmo Roberto Ribeiro da Silva, made some public audiences with entrepreneurs of Belo Horizonte, capital of Minas Gerais, and with the startup community of this city, San Pedro Valley. The main goal of these audiences was to discuss what the state’s government could do to strengthen Minas Gerais’ startup ecosystem. Our state has a good position in the brazilian ecosystem by a quantitative criteria. There are 362 startups based in Minas Gerais according to the Brazilian Association of Startups (ABstartups), the second largest ecosystem in numbers. The first place is granted to São Paulo with 1.315 startups.

The Bill

In the first half of 2016, influenced by the previous audiences mentioned above , a bill was created by those two assemblyman, Bill nº 3.578. It was a basic project which have conceded tax exemptions to startups, have tried to facilitate credit access with banks and have articles promoting entrepreneurial education. This bill was inspired by similar projects from the state of São Paulo, bill nº 522/2016, and from the National Congress lower house, bill nº 6.625/2013.

IRIS have begun to participate in the audiences when the bill was being analised by the Commission of Constitution and Justice in the General Assembly of Minas Gerais. So IRIS’ researchers have made a policy paper on the bill, aiming to improve the quality of the public debate. In this paper we criticized the legal definition of startup established in the project, which conceptualized startup as a software or hardware enterprise. Also we have pointed out that the public audiences were having a deficit of democratic representation since there were only people from the capital participating.

The idea of a Startup Public Policy Forum

In the second half of 2016, after some public audiences the two assemblyman , Arrantes and Dalmo, have agreed with civil society proposal of widening the debate by promoting a public forum. This event had as purpose to stimulate the public debate e take suggestions for a future public policy. In order to do this event a multi-stakeholder committee was formed to organize the forum with the support of the General Management of Institutional Projects, from the Legislative Assembly of Minas Gerais.

The committee have chosen 3 main topics for discussion:

• Topic 1 – Startups, entrepreneurship and innovation: concepts, culture and actors;
• Topic 2 – Startups, policies and debureaucratization;
• Topic 3 – Startups, investments and incentives;

The selection of the places that would host the debates sought to give a greater representation to the different regions of the state. So were chosen 4 cities: Santa Rita do Sapucaí (south), Viçosa (east), Uberlândia (west) e Montes Claros (north). The forum was called “Startups Technical Forum in Minas: the construction of a new public policy”.

Also IRIS researchers have helped to mediate the public debates in two cities: Santa Rita do Sapucaí and Montes Claros.

Proposals and ideas

In these cities, proposals for changes in the public policy were made and systematized, and representatives from each region were elected to participate in the final stage of the Forum, which took place in Belo Horizonte, from November 23 to 25, 2016. Between the organization of the Forum and its final phase, IRIS also developed a comparative research on law and public policies, based on legal frameworks and best practices related to the development of a robust startup ecosystem. Our goal was to bring consistent subsidies to the final phase of the Forum. Laws and policies from Chile, USA, Ireland, United Kingdom, Portugal, France, Israel, South Africa, China, India and Singapore were used in this policy paper.

Forum Results

Finally, in the last phase, the proposals previously collected were discussed together and consolidated with new ones in Belo Horizonte. At the end, civil society has voted a final document with their proposals. IRIS have participated actively, with representatives and coordinators on each thematic area, suggesting new proposals and contributing to the discussions. In the end, 107 institutions and 227 individuals have participated. 63 proposals were consolidated and 32 were selected to be presented officially to the Legislative Assembly of Minas Gerais. IRIS was also  elected as one of the members of the civil society to form a committee that will follow the subsequent legislative steps  of the bill nº  3.578 in 2017.