Análise do portal institucional da Câmara Municipal de Uberlândia quanto à publicação de informações relacionadas às atividades legislativas e à resposta a solicitações de informação

Abstract

On one hand, although access to information is a citizens’ right and essential for them to participate in public management, it is not uncommon for the level of transparency in government agencies to be considered inadequate. On the other hand, there has been an acceleration of digital transformation because of the covid-19 pandemic, which may have improved the availability of government data. In this scenario, this research aimed to analyze public transparency on the institutional website of the Uberlândia City Council through the legislative activity category of Índice de Transparência dos Portais Legislativos and the sending of messages to request information. This is a case study with a qualitative-quantitative approach. All data used are public and their collection took place between May 12 and August 03, 2022; the information requests were made in May of the same year. The results indicate an average level of active transparency (43%), which corroborates the findings of other research related to city councils. The disclosure of content related to parliamentary activities on the Uberlândia City Council's website needs improvement in terms of lack of information, data format, and historical series. However, the material provided is, for the most part, up-to-date and written in clear language. Additionally, for the analysis of passive transparency, requests were sent through the portal's electronic forms, but no response was received. This study has theoretical, social, and practical contributions, since it corroborates the findings of previous research regarding access to information on websites of municipal parliaments; it may provide content that contributes to the demand for more transparency by the local legislature; and contains suggestions for elements to be modified or added to improve the disclosure of content on the website of the Uberlândia’s City Council.