Programa de Transparência Pública

What is FGV’s Programa de Transparência Pública? 

Founded in 2014 with help from Open Society Foundations (OSF), FGV’s Public Transparency Program (PTP) is a joint research project consisting of students and professors in FGV-EBAPE and FGV DIREITO RIO’s Center for Technology and Society.

Three principal research questions drive the FGV’s Public Transparency Program’s (PTP) activities:

  • First, how well are Brazilian public authorities complying with the country’s powerful new transparency laws and regulations?
  • Second, to what extent can transparency mechanisms inform us about the performance of public agencies and public servants? Are governments fairly, effectively, and responsibly managing their personnel, processes, and public policy obligations?
  • Finally, how can we improve the measures and methods that researchers, the media, and advocates use to evaluate governmental transparency? 

What are Brazil’s Most Important Transparency Laws, Regulations, and Repositories?

  • The 2011 Access to Public Information Law (12.527), which is ranked among the top 20 most legally rigorous in the world. Brazil’s Open Data portal has been online since 2011. All jurisdictions in Brazil have regulated law 12.527 through regulations (decretos) that may influence the scope and strength of the right to access public documents.
  • Brazil’s Transparency Portals, which have been operation since 2004, have won international acclaim. Supplementary law 131, enacted in 2009, complements Brazil’s fiscal responsibility law, obligating all municipalities over 10,000 people to report expenditures within 24 hours of execution.
  • Brazil was one of the first country’s in the world to enact an environmental access to information law, in 2003 (10.650)

Our evaluations of governmental compliance with transparency norms often take the shape of ‘sectoral audits’ in which public policy themes or specific institutional practices are examined in depth. Examples include evaluations on remuneration and the policing of protests. See our Research Page for examples.