Access to Information Law in Brazil: What the Implementation Data Reveal

Abstract

This article shows the results of a research to evaluate the implementation process of the Access to Information Law in the Brazilian Federal Government using empirical data on the level of user satisfaction published since 2013 until 2020 by the Office of the Comptroller General in its computing system available in the Internet. The main goal of the research was to contribute to a revival of this complex issue for democracy in a sense of reality, using a twofold methodology axis: (i) analysis of an empirical and significant data sample collected from the system with statistics techniques, and (ii) logic assessment of the resulting statistics parameters based in the Expectancy-Disconfirmation Theory. The empirical data about operational process to implement the law revealed, in one hand, that federal agencies and state-owned companies have evolved to improve the access to information and nowadays Brazilian Federal Government’s performance is in a relatively good position amongst developed and developing countries, with some government bodies achieving high rates of access to information granted to the requester citizens, but, in another hand, also revealed that in some areas of government there is still need of a broad communication to the citizens about the scope of the law. Other important conclusion is that an adequate computing system to implement the access to information is a sine qua non requirement to a steady advance beyond the approval of an Access to Information Law.