The Open Data Policy is considered innovative for many reasons:

- Having instituted in the Federal Executive Branch an open data policy through the signature of the Decree no 8777, in May 2016. Among other features, the Decree requires that government agencies develop their own open data plans with specific commitments to open data.

-Having disseminated, in several States of the country, knowledge about the importance of public agencies that enable open data. This dissemination was made, primarily, through the implementation of in-person and e-learning courses about the topic.

-Having promoted the creation of the new version of the Brazilian Open Data Portal (dados.gov.br), which was officially launched in December 2016. There was an update on its technological platform, which, among other features, now allows integration with open data catalogs of government agencies and other public bodies that follow the Federal Government’s guidelines.

-Having integrated the Brazilian Open Data Portal with the official ombudsmanship system and processes, allowing citizens to register complaints to correct or update information in the different datasets.

-Having promoted continuous support to agencies/entities in the elaboration of Open Data Plans, allowing the sustainability, perenniality, and renovation of the data.

-Having motivated the realization of hackathons, such as the one promoted by the Ministry of Justice, which resulted in the App “Diferentonas”, through which the citizen is able to evaluate public expenses on his city/location. The App is based on a database owned by the Federal Government called “SICONV”.

-Collaborating with the civil society in this specific objective of open data and Open Government.

-Eliminating the barriers of communication that exists between the government and the society in general, making the government more transparent.

The main strategy adopted to advance in the opening of government data was to reach directly the public agencies. First, the ones located in Brasilia, this was possible thanks to the Work Plans of the Brazilian Digital Government Strategy (EGD). The Work Plans are documents signed by the Secretary of Information and Communication Technology from the Ministry of Planning and by the Executive Secretary of each public agency. In this document, the agencies committed to present a plan for data opening (PDA) and to establish goals for the publication of their datasets. Also, to support the agencies in the planning and execution of the data opening, the open data team from the Secretariat of Information and Communication Technology (SETIC) has, since March 2016, began to organize workshops to guide the agencies in the creation of the PDAs. The team also helped by offering their technicians to personally visit the agencies in order to guarantee the development of the PDAs. These measures worked and resulted in the increasing number of PDA publications and the number of databases available in the Open Data Portal. As a result of the workshops, a distance learning course was created, that way it was possible to trained personnel from all states in the country.

The governance, the concepts, and instructions to request and use open government data were formally established with the publication of the Decree no 8777 on May 11th, 2016. After its publication, it was established a more cohesive network between the actors, with the SETIC as responsible for producing content and schedule meetings with the agencies and with the supervisory body (CGU). To continue supporting the Open Data Policy, it was necessary to update the technological platform (dados.gov.br), in order to make possible the integration with the other open data portals of other agencies and levels of government.

Another new feature of the portal is that it will also integrate with the services of digital consumer information service (e-SIC) and digital ombudsman (e-OUV), both provided by the CGU. These services aim to make it easier to the citizens to find the desired information channels from the agencies, in order to: request new data, make compliments or even to complain or to make suggestions about data that need to be opened.

More agencies are interested in committing to open their database and to make available a channel for citizens' demands. Open Data Portal today contains more than 3,100 datasets, mostly from the Federal Public Administration (there were about 1,160 at the beginning of 2016). That adds to the fact that the catalog is being enhanced with the federation (integration) of the open data portals from other agencies and entities. At this moment, 66 agencies and federal entities have already published their PDAs and 21 public agencies have their data catalogs integrated with the Brazilian Open Data Portal, more catalogs are being prepared to increase this number.

Even though the project is considered to be in an implementation stage, as many government agencies have already published their own Open Data Plans, it has already started being evaluated and some lessons learned have been collected. For instance, the project has contributed to improved Brazil’s score in international rankings about open data, such as the Global Open Data Index, in which the country is in 8th place; or the Open Data Barometer, in which Brazil is in 18th place in the world.

Furthermore, some of the lessons learned during the project have been shared with representatives of the governments of Bangladesh, Costa Rica, Indonesia, Nepal, Panama, Philippines, South Korea, and Uruguay, during the International Knowledge-sharing Workshop on Open Government Data for Sustainable Development, promoted by the UN DESA/DPADM in the Netherlands in 2017.

The main partners involved in the Open Data Policy are the Ministry of Transparency, Audition and Comptroller- General of the Union (CGU) and the Ministry of Justice (MJ). Both participated in the initial conversations, in the design and in support the creation of the Decree no 8777/2016. CGU has the essential role of monitoring the application of the Open Data Policy, as described on the article 10 of the Decree. In this sense, they have been supervising the execution of the Open Data Policy in federal agencies. MJ also has had an important role in this policy, by promoting hackathons to support the creation of apps based on their datasets. The National School of Public Administration (ENAP) has also played a key role in supporting the in-person workshops and the e-learning course, building capacity in public officials of hundreds of organizations on how to build plans for open data.

Regarding the participation of society in this process, citizens suggested and required specific data from the federal public agencies through the ombudsman and access to information law services. Some agencies have made public consultations of their Open Data Plans (PDA) before publishing it, thus gathering a better picture of which datasets society is more interested in. The topic of Open Data is also recurring on the OGP Action Plans, built in collaboration with civil society.

Commitment no. 1 of Brazil’s 3rd Action Plan specifically aims to improve the supply of open data to better fit with society’s demand for it. The Ministry has also conducted an open survey with society to better identify the needs for open data. Another way of participation was through contests in which the participants are challenged to make new apps based on open government data, awards were given to those that developed the most relevant apps.

-In 2016 and 2017, more than 700 people participated in 12  workshops and 2 conferences. The e-learning course on Open Data Plan (PDA) elaboration, which was developed in partnership with the National Public Administration School (ENAP), has had 4 editions and over 1,300 people have finished it . These courses were attended by participants from all over Brazil, and more than 70% were from other states, many of the participants came from universities and federal education institutes.

-Digital Government Strategy Work Plans: in 2016 around 25 agencies from the public administration signed agreements with the Ministry of Planning establishing their Work Plans.

-Creation and offer of the following instruments: PDA Model, Manual for PDA crafting, Catalogue Manual. These together made a helpful Open Data Kit developed to support the agencies in the process.

-An Open Data catalog was developed by Brazil’s Central Bank, which has over 400 datasets, available in Application Programming Interfaces (APIs).

-More and more agencies are developing their own open data portals since the initiative began.

-The initiative promoted support for the realization of app's contests and hackathons, such as the one promoted by the Ministry of Justice.

-Highlights to the National Press, that according to its PDA, will make the Union’s Official Journal available in open format, thus facilitating the search, research and analysis of the official acts of the Executive Branch.

-The Ministry of Planning, according to its PDA, has committed to open data from several structuring systems, such as budget, procurement, covenants, and public servants.

-More than 66 PDAs published from several kinds of public agencies and entities. Thus, these agencies have committed with the expansion of transparency in education, healthcare, financial system, social security, regulation, structuring systems, among other public policies.

The main barriers to this initiative were:

-Cultural Barrier – the agencies were not used to making their data available, and are still reluctant to do so, thus closing it to society.

-Lack of knowledge and enthusiasm of the agencies with the policy.

-Communication problems

-Low budget and reduced team

-Database inventory in initial stats or lacking classification

These barriers are being addressed and mitigated mostly as a result of the workshops, technical meetings and the distance learning course on PDA elaboration, and also by the partnership with CGU and MJ. The meetings and workshops helped to disseminate the concepts regarding open data, and presented the importance of this data opening in Brazil and in the world. It also helped in the elaboration of the PDAs. This workshop model was later converted in the distance learning course, which allowed the mass qualification of public servants of all Brazilian states.

We consider being essential to the existence of a National Digital Governance Strategy that has the opening of government data as one of its main concerns. Further legislation can also be created in order to reinforce the content of the Digital Governance Strategy, such as the Decree no 8777/2016. It is also very important to get the public agencies and entities to commit to the initiative through the signature of a formal document.

In Brazil’s case, the Ministry of Planning (MP) established Work Plans signed and committed by the agencies,  in exchange for receiving IT Analysts hired by the MP. One of the most recurrent goals in these Work Plans was the implementation of at least 75% of the Open Data Plans. At last, it is very important to supervise the deadlines agreed upon by the agencies, process that was made with the assistance of the control bodies (Ministry of Transparency and The Federal Court of Accounts).

The Open Data Policy was disseminated, firstly, to the agencies and entities from the Federal Executive Branch located in Brasilia. This was made basically through technical meetings and workshops. Afterward, this policy has started to expand to the federative states. Alagoas was the pioneer state, which has inaugurated its open data portal in 2016. Other states that also replicated these initiatives were Rio Grande do Norte, Espírito Santo, and the Federal District. It was also replicated by the Central Bank, which offers more than 1100 datasets on its portal, and already have APIs for extraction and disposal of the data.

Aiming towards expanding even further this initiative and replicate the policy in agencies and entities from the public administration, that are located outside Brasilia, the open data team has developed, in partnership with the National School of Public Administration (ENAP), the distance learning course on Open Data Plan elaboration.

Decree No. 8777 / 2016 establishes the open data planning lifecycle as an obligation for every government ministry and agency at the federal level. Besides that, creation and maintenance of inventories and corporate catalogs of data. The Brazilian Open Data Portal is the central open data catalog and, as an important innovation, one can highlight the integration with the electronic ombudsman system (e-OUV) of the CGU, that allows any citizen to complain about the quality of the data.

In addition to the integration with e-OUV, another case of success of the Portal is the integration with other data catalogs from other branches and levels of government. At this moment, 66 agencies and federal entities have already published their PDAs and 21 public agencies have their data catalogs integrated with the Brazilian Open Data Portal, more catalogs are being prepared to increase this number.

The great achievement of the Open Data Policy of the Federal Executive Branch was that it made mandatory to the agencies to elaborate the Open Data Plan - PDA. In this plan, the agency should prepare the schedule of data opening and assign a responsible agent for opening up the datasets. It should be noted that the Ministry of Planning is responsible for the management of the Open Data Policy and the CGU is responsible for monitoring the implementation and execution of the Plan.

The Ministry created e-learning courses promoting the knowledge about open data and held several workshops in the biennium 2016 and 2017, teaching the federal executive agencies how to build their PDAs. CGU has developed a Panel that allows citizens to monitor whether or not the body has published its PDA, as well as whether or not the commitments to open up specific datasets have been fulfilled, in which case they must be already present and cataloged in the Brazilian Open Data Portal.