It was partly populist – motorists welcomed it – and partly structural, reducing bureaucracy and, above all, corruption.
But the government, made shy by the region's financial crisis, stifled early enthusiasm with heavy-handed bureaucracy and postponement of structural reforms.
Conte said the letter was intended to explain the government's strategy, which includes structural reforms, making investments and simplifying bureaucracy and fiscal procedures.
Its announced priorities have not involved primary structural change so much as proposals like eliminating bureaucracy, digitalizing the administration's communications, increasing broadband use and developing electronic-based transport.
"There is no question that there are lots of people in the bureaucracy who will resist this kind of structural -- more importantly, cultural -- change," Mr. Klein said.
However, structural reforms, cracking down on corruption, diminishing the Brazilian bureaucracy, rooting out patronage, have not yet had the effect that people have hoped for.
He said that there were structural issues that needed to be addressed, like a bureaucracy that discouraged entrepreneurship and that had ballooned in five years by 100,000 employees to a total of 430,000, about 1 percent of the population.
Still, critics are growing more vocal about the need for Brazil to become more energetic in addressing complex structural dilemmas weighing the economy down, including its byzantine bureaucracy and woeful public schools.
But the dramatic far-reaching structural reforms to overhaul the labour market and the bureaucracy are not in place.
Many of the structural problems with the USPS can be blamed on another bureaucracy, the U.S. Congress.
For years, the organization principles and structural design of hospitals have been labelled as a professional bureaucracy.
