In 2004, the Brazilian Federal Government Transparency portal was inaugurated by the Office of the Comptroller General (CGU). The portal opens the government’s use of state financial resources to public scrutiny, allowing every citizen to verify how and where the government is using taxpayer money.
In 2011 the Open Government Partnership was launched with Brazil and the United States as the founding co-chairs of OGP’s Steering Committee. Then in 2012, the Brazilian Open Data portal was initiated to give the public access to raw data from public agencies. The Open Data portal is an integral part of the Open Data National Infrastructure (Infraestrutura Nacional de Dados Abertos, or INDA) under the Ministry of Planning, Budget and Management.
While the interface of the Transparency portal allows citizens to perform direct information searches, the Open Data portal provides raw data and allows external applications to combine, analyze and visualize information from several sources. The applications are being developed – mostly by civil society – and cataloged inside the Open Data portal itself, and serve as the basis for all new applications under development.
Key success factors for the Open Data process in Brazil include strong political will and the participation of civil society combined with a consolidated policy environment and adequate institutional arrangements fostering state and municipal participation in a national open data infrastructure.
“Strong political will” in this case indicates that the federal agencies leading the transparency and open data initiatives are close to the strategic, steering levels of the government, while the “consolidated policy environment” means there are laws and normative instructions in place to enforce transparency and open data. Supporting these factors are the building of local knowledge and talent able to produce replicable, quick wins, with the capacity to maintain and grow the process in the long run.