The Role of Public Administration in Sustainable Development

Sustainability has been seen as the key to reversing the planet’s plight and ensuring better living conditions in the future. Since the discussion on sustainable development has gained momentum, actions at the global level have been implemented so that, through an integrated change process, the long-awaited sustainable development is achieved. There are many inherent challenges to sustainability, however, through strategies and proper execution, it is possible to achieve good performance in all dimensions (environmental, economic and social). Thus, the objective of this study is to identify, through a literature review using the Knowledge Development Process—Constructivist (Proknow-C) intervention instrument, the role of public entities and local authorities in the implementation and execution of sustainable practices, as well as the indicators used to assess their performance. Considering that the decision maker has a fundamental role in choosing the criteria for choosing one action instead of another, an evaluation model was built supported by the Multi-Criteria for Decision Support—Constructivist methodology—MCDA-C, through which it was possible to realize that the focus of attention of the municipal administration studied is the social dimension. The limitation of the research is the construction of the model based on only one municipality, so that the methodology can be replicated in other municipalities of similar size in order to confirm the existence of a standard of vision of public decision makers.