The Public Transparency Program

What is FGV’s Public Transparency Program? 

Founded in 2014 in collaboration with the Open Society Foundations (OSF), FGV’s Public Transparency Program (PTP) is a joint research project composed of students and professors in FGV-EBAPE and FGV DIREITO.

Three main questions guide FGV’s Public Transparency Program (PTP) activities:

  • Firstly, to what extent are public authorities complying with the new rules and laws of public transparency?
  • Secondly, to what extent can transparency mechanisms inform us about the performance of public agencies and public servants? Are the authorities managing their personnel, processes, and public policy obligations fairly, efficiently and responsibly?
  • Finally, how can we improve the metrics and methods that researchers, the media, and citizens use to evaluate governmental transparency? 

What are Brazil’s most important Transparency Laws, Regulations, and Repositories?

  • Brazil's Access to Information Law (12.527) is ranked among the top 20 most legally rigorous in the world.
  • Brazil’s Open Data Portal has been available online since 2011.
  • All jurisdictions in Brazil have regulated Law 12.527 through decrees that may influence the scope and strength of the right to access public documents.
  • Brazil’s Transparency Portals, which has been in operation since 2004 and has been praised internationally.
  • 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, in 2003, was one of the first countries in the world to enact an Environmental Information Access Law (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.