Mecanismos de ampliação da transparência em portais de dados abertos governamentais brasileiros à luz da Accountability Theory

Abstract

The Government Open Data (DAG) is the data made available free of charge by government entities and can be freely used, reused and redistributed by any person. The Brazilian portals that provide Open Government Data (PBDAG) need to meet a number of mechanisms so that the discovery, extraction and use of data can be effectively carried out by society. However, the lack of mechanisms that guarantee the reliability and data quality in PBDAGs makes difficult to increase transparency for the purpose of accountability. The research focus is the mechanisms identification that increases transparency in PBDAG with the purpose of attending Accountability Theory (TA) accountability process. By systematic reviews of the scientific literature on OGD and Accountability Theory, covering 124 and 594 articles respectively, and the subsequent interview with national experts in OGD, 18 mechanisms and their indicators were proposed, which aim to increase the degree of transparency in Portals which provide Open Government Data. The proposed mechanisms were considered extremely and very important in the perception of the majority of the 115 users of OGD, respondents of the electronic instrument. The results showed that the evolution of the use and the research on OGD made it possible to add authenticity, irrefutability, integrity, compliance, amplitude, reliability and citizen participation to the original mechanisms. The classification of these mechanisms and the formulation of a transparency index made it possible to evaluate and classify the portals that make OGD available through a content analysis, which analyzed 833 data sets. The criteria and ease of future reapplication will allow comparison with other national portals, serving as a benchmarking to public managers, stakeholders and area researchers. In terms of theoretical contributions the two Systematic Reviews of Literature (RSL) help to illustrate the status quo of scientific research on these two themes. In this sense, the broad categorization of research on OGD, obtained through the RSL, produced a classification in 7 dimensions, coming from the OGD concept and in 10 terms more approached in articles about OGD. This categorization makes it possible to indicate which directions can be adopted in future research on OGD and which topics have already been extensively explored, as well as possible combinations among them. The results of the present study extend the scope of Accountability Theory by focusing on the accountability of public agents, through the OGDs, since the perception of the respondents demonstrates the aspects that increase the transparency to serve this purpose. The present research also demonstrated a new method for evaluation of items by interviewees, during semi-structured interviews. In addition, it produced a new electronic data collection instrument to be used in future research on increasing transparency for OGD portals, with a focus on accountability. Nevertheless, the present research was able to gather and combine concepts from the area of Information Security, with concepts from the Open Government area, along with concepts derived from studies on Transparency and Accountability Theory concepts.