Spa considers creating its own career path
The Secretariat of Prizes and Bets (SPA), responsible for regulating and overseeing the betting market in Brazil, has initiated efforts to expand its staff and strengthen its institutional structure. The agency requested the Ministry of Finance to issue a regulatory act that allows it to requisition employees from other public administration entities, in response to recent demands from the Federal Court of Accounts.
According to the Painel column of the newspaper Folha de S.Paulo, the request was formalized by the Secretary of Prizes and Bets, Regis Dudena, through a letter addressed to the Executive Secretariat of the Ministério da Fazenda. The initiative aims to comply with a determination from the Tribunal de Contas da União, which granted a 120-day deadline for the ministry to provide the SPA with human, technological, and budgetary resources appropriate to its functions.
In the document cited by the São Paulo-based media, Dudena points out that complying with the TCU’s decision requires a structured plan involving various government areas, as well as medium- and long-term measures to increase the number of positions and roles available within the Secretariat. In this context, the official also proposed the possibility of creating a dedicated career path for the SPA, considering the high level of technical specialization demanded by regulatory activity.
The secretary emphasized that such a structure should be compatible with the role of a regulatory body, ensuring continuity, consolidation of institutional memory, and coherence in decisions made over time.
Currently, the Secretariat of Prizes and Bets does not have its own employees or career path. To fulfill its functions, it depends on staff from transversal careers, such as specialists in public policies and government management or technical analysts of social policies, in addition to requests for personnel secondment from other agencies. However, Dudena acknowledges that this scheme has not yielded the expected results, either due to a lack of effective assignments or the low number of authorized secondments, even for coordination positions.
Faced with this scenario, the head of the SPA argues that a viable alternative would be to grant the agency the legal prerogative to requisition public agents from other bodies and entities of the administration, as a way to reinforce its operational capacity amid a growing workload in a rapidly expanding sector.
At the close of the letter, Dudena requested that the Executive Secretariat of the Ministry of Finance proceed with drafting a specific regulatory proposal to formalize this authority for the SPA. When consulted by Folha de S.Paulo, the Ministry of Finance declined to comment and did not disclose how many employees currently make up the Secretariat nor how many would be necessary to fully comply with the TCU’s requirements.
Tags: Brazil, SPA, Brazil betting, Brazil betting control, SPA Brazil betting oversight