Acesso à informação pública: um estudo a partir dos portais eletrônicos dos Municípios do Agreste Paraibano.

Abstract

Public transparency is fundamental for the idealization of a clearer and fairer society. Brazil, with the intention of guaranteeing and promoting the consolidation of transparency and democracy, enacted in 2011 the Law on Access to Information, with the purpose of implementing the culture of access in public administration. Even being in law, the application of public transparency presents some difficulties for its fulfillment. This research aimed to verify the adherence of official websites of city halls in the mesoregion of the agreste of Paraiba to the requirements established in the Access to Information Law. As for the methodology, it is classified as descriptive, exploratory, bibliographical, documental, and qualitative and quantitative in nature. Thus, the official websites of the 64 municipalities in the agreste were accessed, analyzed from three different perspectives: for municipalities with a population of less than or equal to 10 thousand inhabitants, for municipalities with a population greater than 10 thousand inhabitants and for all municipalities in general. A questionnaire with 11 dichotomous questions (yes/no) was used as data collection instruments, having as reference the Silva questionnaire (2018), based on the items of the third paragraph of the eighth article of Law 12,527/2011, and a free tool and in web version, the ASES, to identify the level of accessibility of each site. The results obtained show that, even though most electronic portals provide a positive response to the existence of items such as search tools, use of citizen language, guarantee of authentic and complete information, and facilitation of communication with the population via email and/or telephone. Other requirements were also contemplated, such as: constant updating of the transparency portals, availability of reports in various electronic and machinereadable formats, minimum structuring of information and accessibility for people with disabilities. Many municipalities still face difficulties in complying with the minimum requirements of LAI, due to administrative and operational problems and the absence of a culture of access in these entities.