FGV’s Brazilian School of Public and Business Administration (FGV EBAPE) professor Robert Gregory Michener kicked off the quarterly meeting of the National Council of State Planning Secretaries (Conseplan). The event held on June 8 brought together planning secretaries from all Brazilian states.

Michener talked about the expansion of transparency policies in Brazil and worldwide in recent years. The professor presented the paper titled “Da opacidade à transparência? Avaliando a Lei de Acesso à Informação no Brasil cinco anos depois” [From Opacity to Transparency? Evaluating Access to Information in Brazil Five Years Later], which will be published on Revista de Administração Pública (Brazilian Journal of Public Administration – RAP), edited by EBAPE, highlighting the performance of the states and gaps in terms of compliance and implementation. 

Drawing upon official data from nine assessments of compliance with transparency obligations, interviews with politicians and public managers, as well as archive research, the paper presents descriptive and inferential statistics regarding compliance with requests for access to information and implementation indicators. The results show that less than one in two requests for Access to Information in Brazil gets a reply from the government, and more than 50% of requests exceed the deadline imposed by law.

The research also illustrates inconsistent implementation based on the lack of government statistics on requests, public commitments regarding access to information, specific platforms to submit information requests, and designated control agencies.

“Brazil desperately needs to invest in information management, enabling control institutions to implement and adjudicate transparency obligations”, said the professor.