Programas de governo aberto na América do Sul : estudo da participação eletrônica, transparência e dados abertos por meio da teoria da ação comunicativa

Abstract

Open Government is an expression of public management highly supported by technology that seeks to get closer to the citizen, enabling its co-authorship in government choices through electronic participation and allowing a broad access to public information and its databases, including open data. Due to their similarities and differences, Uruguay, Colombia and Chile were chosen as the locus of the multiple case study whose general objective is to examine open government programs in Latin America in order to explore potential effects in the democratic context. This qualitative study relies on the Theory of Communicative Action as a theoretical lens and Critical Discourse Analysis as the vehicle of analyzing interviews with journalists, politicians, academics and representatives of civil society and the governments involved. Field research contributions indicate a very limited participation, virtually no electronic participation, transparency reaching a minority of the population and open data for experts who understand the subject. The Open Government Partnership, a worldwide open government advocacy organization, despite its role as promoter of this form of management worldwide, imposes on models that would require adjustments and accepts members who do not comply with the principles of the organization. Civil society organizations have been given the role of representative of citizens in policy making and commitment, but at the same time no clear criteria has been set for the choice of representatives. The contributions based on the interviews and the website research resulted in the elaboration of the Open Government Apparent and Non-Apparent Structure, showing the positive and negative points. Grounded in this framework and based on the foundations of the Theory of Communicative Action, the study presents the main theoretical contribution, the Open Government Support Structure, based on the tripod speech, political will and resources. Finally, this thesis proposes practical improvements through measures in open government, connectivity, friendliness and accessibility of portals, in the Open Government Partnership and in governments.