Over time, official figures showed a reduction in waiting times, so the government proclaimed the measure a success. However, subsequent studies showed that the reason for the improved times was not better service, but quite the opposite. We must be careful when setting goals. Although the numbers helped sell the narrative that the city was safer, the perception was that crime had not decreased. Assigning additional money to an institution does not mean it will be spent efficiently, as the Ministry of Education has already demonstrated. However, as the old saying goes, the devil is in the details. Recently, we have seen in the National Assembly how law proposals have emerged to solve problems by hammering results. The program established that public schools could lose public funds or face intervention if their students had low academic performance on standardized tests. The organization is made up of entrepreneurs and professionals from all branches, who voluntarily donate their time, knowledge, and experience for the benefit of Panama. The opinions expressed in this article are solely the responsibility of the author. In the early 2000s, Tony Blair's government introduced a results-oriented management system for the National Health Service, setting strict maximum waiting time targets for emergencies and consultations. In 1994, New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and Police Commissioner William Bratton implemented CompStat, a management system that would allow the effectiveness of each precinct in reducing crime to be evaluated. At this point, the reader can already anticipate what happened. In other words, when the motivation is to meet an indicator, agents will find a way to make what is measured reflect the goal to be reached. It is the most basic principle of economics, but one that our authorities seem not to understand: people act based on incentives. No matter how much you try to legislate as if a technician were programming an algorithm or an engineer configuring a system, each individual will act according to their interests and abilities. The program was eventually replaced in 2015 by the Every Student Succeeds Act, which included other indicators such as attendance, school climate, graduation rate, and student progress. Despite having noble intentions, these cases and many others follow the phenomenon known as Goodhart's Law, named after British economist Charles Goodhart, who proclaimed: 'when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.' Throwing money at health without criteria for its use can easily be wasted, for example, on payroll, if the goal is simply to allocate X% of GDP to the budget. Of course, as Milton Friedman said: we must judge public policies by their results and not by their intentions. Focusing on meeting a metric or indicator and not on the process leads us to fall into Goodhart's Law and create new problems while celebrating the illusion of success. Dr. Eric Molino Ferrer, economist, president of the Inter-American Council of Commerce and Production, Panama chapter, notes that trying to 'optimize' results leads to negative consequences. For example, to meet the waiting time indicator, hospitals kept patients in ambulances to stop the clock, some were transferred from area to area, and others were even discharged prematurely. At the same time, but back in the U.S., the No Child Left Behind program was created. Trying to 'optimize' the results, teachers began to focus only on topics tested in the exam and even excluded low-performing students from tests to improve the average. All, at first glance, with a spirit of moral virtue, but with clear negative consequences for those they presumably seek to help. After multiple audits, the reality was that serious crimes were reclassified as minor offenses, victims were discouraged from filing reports to avoid increasing the records, and reports were manipulated to meet the target. The Inter-American Council of Commerce and Production (CICYP), Panama chapter, is a think tank committed to the defense of democracy, economic freedom, private initiative, and the development of Panama.
