Open data from the Brazilian government: Understanding the perspectives of data suppliers and developers of applications to the citizens

Abstract

Open Government Data (OGD) is seen as a way to promote transparency, as well as to provide information to the population by opening data related to various government sectors and processes. By using applications developed with this type of data, citizens gain knowledge about a certain public sphere; governments, in turn, are able to promote transparency and improvements through the interaction with citizens who use such applications. To create these applications, developers need to extract, process and analyze OGD available by data suppliers. This research was conducted in two phases: the first sought to investigate the perspective of developers who use Brazilian OGD; in the second phase, we investigated the perspectives of data suppliers. Through semi-structured interviews with twenty-four developers and data suppliers, this work reports what motivates them to work with OGD, as well as the barriers they face in this process. Our findings indicate that both participants seek to promote transparency for the population, but they run up against poor data quality, cultural barriers, among other issues. We present and qualitatively characterize these issues, providing recommendations for the improvement of the Brazilian OGD ecosystem.