President Enrique Peña Nieto began his presidency with changes to protocol, such as working more often from the presidential office at the Palacio Nacional and less from the presidential residence (Los Pinos), occasionally walking through the streets, such as when he walked to the Supreme Court to hear the report presented by its president, or getting closer to the public through his tours throughout the country. Furthermore, he has changed the structure of the public administration in the following ways: by granting new powers to the Department of the Interior, which was very powerful prior to the PAN administrations, by abolishing the Department of Public Security, which was created by former President Calderon, and by abolishing the Department of Governmental Affairs. He has also made significant changes to the Department of Agrarian Reform, which will now be known as the Department of Agrarian, Land and Urban Development, and to the Department of Social Development. The new Organic Public Federal Administration Law grants new powers to the Department of the Interior, which has received the structure, resources and personnel from the Department of Public Security. As a result, the Department of the Interior assumed the office of the National Public Security System and will exercise the Federal Police power. Furthermore, the Department of the Interior will also control the prison system and be in charge of information on public and national safety. To a certain extent, this model is similar to that operated by the United States, where there is a committee on internal policy and another on national security at the White House, or to that in France, where the Ministry of the Interior is responsible for national safety, the national police and civil defense. It has also been said that the Department of the Interior is above all other departments and that as a result it has pre-eminence over the other departments. The previous is not completely accurate from a legal point of view. While it is true that the recent reforms to the constitution (2012) provide that, in the president's absence, the Secretary of the Interior will take over while Congress meets (there is no vice-presidency in Mexico), the Organic Law expressly indicates that the Department of State has the same rank and there is no pre-eminence as between the two. The President may convene the Cabinet directly or through the Department of the Interior, which means that the other departments depend on or are hierarchically inferior to the Department of the Interior. It is undeniable that the Department of the Interior has recovered the image it had 12 years ago up, before the governance of the PAN administrations, as well as new important powers.
