Public Transparency: analysis of portals of professional supervisory councils in Northeastern Brazil

Abstract

The aim of this article was to analyze the public transparency practiced by the Professional Supervisory Councils of northeastern Brazil in the light of the Law on Access to Information. The study included the Boards of Directors, Accounting Councils, Economics Councils and Brazilian Bar Associations of the nine Northeastern States, totaling 36 units surveyed. Methodologically it was a quantitative approach from exploratory data analysis and using Klein's conceptual model (2018) that addresses four dimensions of institutional transparency: active transparency, passive transparency, good practices and open data plan. Systematic incursions were made in the institutional sites, as well as an experiment was carried out based on the demand for information via the perspective of passive transparency. Among the main results, the CRC's has the best scores of attendance to public transparency with an average of 76.90 points, that is, more than double the scores obtained by the Boards of Directors (average of 34.24), Economics (average of 36.49) and OAB (average of 31.74). In the dimensional view of the indicator: active and passive transparency, it was observed that all professional councils do not present the completeness of the requirements of the Law on Access to Information (LAI) present in this dimension. When considering good transparency practices and the provision of open data, it is the time when the most unsatisfactory results are obtained, since it is found that some of the investigated councils do not meet any of the two dimensions. It is concluded that, with the exception of the Accounting Council, the other present a low degree of public transparency in the light of LAI, the real interest of managers on the front lines of these Professional Councils is in fact being clear with regard to public transparency for their registered records and society (HEALD, 2006).