Country: Brazil

One of the measures adopted by the Senate to inform and assist in the fight against the new coronavirus was the provision of an online chat so that employees can ask questions, with doctors of the House, about covid-19. The demands, answered exclusively by messages, are answered from 7:00 to 19:00, from Monday to Friday. In this way, specialists answer questions such as forms of contagion, symptoms of the disease and advise on the necessary referrals. The action will continue until the situation…

Brazil has created an app to help share health information about the coronavirus. It contains information about symptoms, directions for sufferers, maps of nearby health units, and distributes official health news. It is a centralised digital hub that all citizens can access remotely that brings services together for their help.

Minas Gerais Government Transparency Portal is an instrument of transparency and control of state governmental actions by its citizens. The data available on the portal allows citizens to inspect and monitor public expenses of the government, contributing to greater transparency and prevention of corruption. Since its creation, the portal has been improved and complies to regulations and standards of public information and has a user friendly interface.

With the maturing of the Transparency Policy in the Brazilian Federal Executive Branch, there was a need to broaden the assessment of the implementation of the Access to Information Act. The innovation here lies in the methodology adopted, which was previously quantitative and is now also qualitative, allowing an improvement in the answers provided to citizens and the extension of the transparency culture, favoring all stakeholders: public bodies under assessment, citizens and the Government.

The project of monitoring open government commitments was developed with the objective of guaranteeing the fulfillment of the Brazilian initiatives in the scope of the Open Government Partnership. It is a process carried out jointly, periodically and proactively by government and civil society, with significant results for society as a whole. This approach is materialized through specific monitoring and evaluation actions that provide transparency regarding the implementation of Brazilian OGP…

The methodology of the “Brazil Transparency Scale” Survey consists of a checklist on 17 categories that cover all relevant aspects of the access to information regulation at the local level, the existence and functionality of the electronic Citizen Information Service (passive transparency), as well as the information disclosure of public funds, revenue, expenditure, public bidding, etc. (active transparency). The final evaluation score ranged from zero to ten.

Not only is transparency in Brazil taken as the principle of publicity in public administration, but also as a Public Policy, led by integrated actions focused on achieving specific goals. Brazilian Government has reaped concrete quantitative and qualitative transparency-driven results: saving of resources, reformulation of public policies and inhibition of misconduct and corruption acts. The Transparency Portal is the core of the policy and central tool to promote results through transparency.

HubGov is an interinstitutional program of innovation in Government that has the participation of institution from the three spheres and three powers. Through a learning trail in innovation and intrapreneurship skills, each institution comes up with a complex challenge and at the end of the program presents a solution proposal to this challenge.

The Internet has facilitated online services for citizens, but it has also facilitated Internet searches of service-seeking citizens by public officials, triggering conscious or unconscious bias. Via freedom of information (FOI) requests, academics provided evidence of this phenomenon at work. Brazil's Comptroller General (CGU) responded by implementing a check-box in its online FOI requesting system so that requesters could choose to remain anonymous. This innovation is a first for FOI regimes.

Animal and plant health surveillance is a part of the structure of agricultural and livestock production, including supply safety, pest and pathogen control, and certification of agro-industrial products. However, we lacked of tools that allow integration of activities and ensure agility in the transmission of the data obtained in the field. We developed an integrated system of surveillance for the inspectors to use, in the animal husbandry agency in the state of Minas Gerais, the Instituto…