Santos, Otávio Albuquerque Ritter dos
Information and Communications Technology (IT) tools and the use of the internet as a means of dissemination of services and information strengthen the interaction of the Sate with society. The release of public data on government portals in formats permitting its free appropriation and use by civil society, or “open government data” as it is known, allows the State to diversify and increase its channels of communication with society, reinforcing democratic practices, the efficiency of public services, and economic development. On the other hand, the same information can be manipulated and used according to individual or collective interests at play, strengthening social inequalities and benefitting those who possess the best resources to wield it.
Contributing to the development of the literature on transparency, especially as a means of supporting public policy in the social area, this research has as its main goal to analyze the effects of open educational data about the management and practice of the educational process in primary education. The question this study seeks to answer is: how does public access to information through technology interfere in the form of administrating public policies surrounding primary schooling?
In order to construct the response, primary schooling experiences in Brazil and in the United Kingdom were compared with relation to the availability and use of educational data identifying the social actors involved, the sets of open data made available, the associated public policies, and the externalities created by their use. 59 interviews were carried out between 2013 and 2014 with actors from both countries, including education secretaries, school administrators, parents of students, organized civil society representatives, academia, private enterprises and hacker groups.
The main findings point to the distinct dynamics stemming from the use of open educational data in Brazil and the UK. While in the UK, the data are used to compare the individual performance of schools, guiding parental choices, in Brazil, the emphasis is placed on the improvement of management through the definition of quality of learning goals. One common factor of both countries is the conflict between worldviews of the professionals acting in this area: one is “data driven”, signaling to the agent a form of management based on concrete, measurable facts obtained through data analysis, the other is “data informed”, signaling a form of management which appropriates the data as a starting point for a dialogical and subjective process, taking into consideration the analysis of the socioeconomic context. The intensive use of information technology in education amplifies this conflict and brings about new challenges and debates such as new teaching methodologies and the dilemma of individual privacy in the face of the collective needs.
The main contribution of this work is to broaden the knowledge about the effects of transparency policies through the use of open data. A large part of the literature on the subject seeks to focus on technical aspects surrounding the management of information, hampering the understanding of how this tool can help to design public policies and its consequences on the social actors involved.