ARE PUBLIC ORGANIZATIONS READY

10 FOR DATA OPENNESS? OBSTACLES IN

THE LARGEST LATIN AMERICAN
METROPOLIS

Maísa FAGUNDES*
EAESP-FGV, Brazil

ABSTRACT In Brazil, people demand transparency, accountability, and innovations from the
government. Public organizations, on the other hand, fear the challenges posed by
opening their data and continue to use outdated incompatible technology. People
want to run, public organizations wish to walk on eggs.
Sao Paulo is the largest city in Latin America, a vast metropolis, similar to New
York in its vibrancy. In 2013, the city came to a halt when the rise in bus fares led
to the largest popular demonstrations seen in decades. Since then, popular
participation in general has increased and there is a rising demand for more
transparency.
Following the Sao Paulo protests, the municipality established the MobiLab, an
award-winning laboratory of new technologies, to facilitate social participation in
urban mobility issues. Simultaneously, the municipality signed up to participate in
the United Nations Open Government Partnership (OGP), becoming one of the
sub-national participants.
One of the five goals set in the first OGP’s action plan - the Laboratory of
Technological Innovation - intends to allow broader participation in an existing
tech laboratory (the LabProdam).
However, among the aforementioned five goals, this is the only one that has been
delayed, since there are many barriers to its implementation, which are analyzed in
this paper.
There is an urgent need in Brazil to use technology appropriately for the
establishment of an open government; the recent corruption scandals have raised
the public's outcry for transparency and accountability. However, are local public
organizations ready for the necessary data openness?

KEYWORDS Data openness, obstacles, Open Government Partnership, public organizations,

sub-national governments.

INTRODUCTION
Promoting open governments around the world is crucial. And it is also known that technology has
helped the pursue of this goal.

*
Corresponding author. E-mail address: maisa.fagundes@fgv.br

161
 TAD 14 - THE DISCIPLINES AND THE STUDY OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

In the largest city in Brazil - and in Latin America - several initiatives were launched in the past years
in order to use technological innovations to implement open government.

This paper intends to make a diagnosis of the situation of the Municipality of Sao Paulo regarding the
fulfillment of a commitment assumed before the OGP.

Apparently, the implementation of this commitment to increase technological innovation is facing

several difficulties. The objective of this work is to understand the main difficulties faced.

The identification of the problems faced by the City of Sao Paulo may provide a foundation for the
preparation of the next OGP action plans. One must learn from one's mistakes and difficulties. As
Lindblom teaches, “A wise policy-maker consequently expects that his policies will achieve only part
of what he hopes and at the same time will produce unanticipated consequences he would have
preferred to avoid. If he proceeds through a succession of incremental changes, he avoids serious
lasting mistakes in several ways.” (1959, p. 86).

The case in question presents some mistakes that must be avoided by the time the policy in question is
redesigned. It was chosen from the simple observation of the data published by the City Hall on its
website regarding the fulfillment of the goals assumed before the OGP. Only the target for
technological innovation is delayed, indicating the existence of obstacles.

To answer the mentioned question, a semi-structured interview has been conducted, as well as an
analysis of documents made available online by OGP and by the Sao Paulo City Hall.

MANUSCRIPT
The OGP
The idea of open government is related to government transparency and citizen participation, always
with the aim of improving governance. In fact, “Citizens are empowered to spark the innovation that
will result in an improved approach to governance.” (O’Reilly apud Lathrop & Ruma, 2010, p. 12-
13).

In times of broad opensource technologies usage and of dissemination of tech development skills, the
number of people capable of contributing to technological innovation has been increasing
considerably.

And, in recent times, technology has proved to be one of the main tools for the promotion of open
governments, where people are given access to the government's decisions and activities and are
allowed and stimulated to influence them.

162
 TAD 14 - THE DISCIPLINES AND THE STUDY OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

In fact, the population has even been called upon to develop innovations that can contribute to
improving governance. Today, because of this awareness of the importance of open governments,
government data of interest to the population must be made available in an open format, which means,
so that they can be freely reused for a variety of purposes. But open data and open government cannot
be confused with each other.

According to Yu & Robinson, “Open government and open data can each exist without the other: A
government can be an open government, in the sense of being transparent, even if it does not embrace
new technology (the key question is whether stakeholders know what they need to know to keep the
system honest). And a government can provide open data on politically neutral topics even as it
remains deeply opaque and unaccountable.” (2012, p. 181)

But while the openness of data is not essential for a government to be open, the usage of technology
to promote transparency, accountability and popular participation has been the main tool for
promoting such openness.

On September 20, 2011, eight countries - Brazil, Indonesia, Mexico, Norway, the Philippines, South
Africa, the United Kingdom and the United States - signed the Open Government Declaration at the
United Nations General Assembly.

Thus was created the Open Government Partnership (OGP), an international initiative of voluntary
adhesion that aims to promote the opening of governments around the world. The signatory countries
presented their action plans.

According to the OGP brochure (2016), the principles of this movement are: promote transparency,
empower citizens, fight corruption, and harness new technologies to strengthen governance.

Today, more than 70 countries are participating in the OGP, as well as 15 subnational governments.
In order to join the partnership, the government must endorse the declaration and present a plan of
action with commitments to be fulfilled.

The National Action Plan of each government must have been built upon a dialogue with civil society,
which should participate in the whole cycle of the plan: creation, implementation and evaluation.

The OGP does not impose an opening standard. The plan must be built by the government along with
local civil society, so that it responds to the local real problems and considers the possibilities of
implementation. After its elaboration it is submitted to independent review.

The document is valid for two years and must be replaced by another that takes into account the
lessons learned from previous experience, as well as new contributions from civil society and from
the Steering Committee. This committee, composed of representatives of governments and civil
society organizations, oversees the implementation of the plans.

163
 TAD 14 - THE DISCIPLINES AND THE STUDY OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

One of the characteristics of OGP is the incentive to the usage of new technologies and innovations in
public policies. OGP "places its trust in the power of ideas".

The Municipality of Sao Paulo joined the OGP in 2016 to participate in a pilot program that included
subnational governments - municipalities, states and counties - in order to bring the reforms closer to
the citizens. The city was already developing several open government initiatives by that time.

Sao Paulo then presented a plan of action and adopted the principles of OGP - transparency,
accountability, social participation and technology and innovation.

The Sao Paulo experience

Having joined OGP in 2016, Sao Paulo had the task of developing, along with civil society, a plan of
action with 3 to 5 open government commitments which should be implemented in 2017.

The preparation of the plan was delegated to Open Sao Paulo, an initiative of the Municipal
Secretariat of International Relations and of the General Comptroller of the Municipality.

To enable civil society participation, two meetings were held, both with social organizations working
on the theme of open government and with movements.

Two questionnaires were elaborated. The first one was applied to members of civil society, in person
and online, and obtained 400 responses. The second was restricted to those interested in participating
in the process of creating the plan, and had 23 responses. From the responses, it was possible to make
a diagnosis of the society perception regarding the concept of open government and the policies in
this matter that were being carried out.

A Shared Management Forum was created to follow the cycle of the action plan. Eight companies
participated in a procurement in order to integrate the forum, which was also composed of servants
from Open Sao Paulo and of the General Comptroller of the Municipality. The forum met weekly.

In the end, each member pointed out relevant themes, which were summarized in 9 major problems to
be tackled. They were the latent challenges of the city.

The second stage of creation of the plan involved 3 workshops, with the participation of 73 citizens,
who selected the main problems and presented solutions.

Finally, the action plan encompassed the following 5 commitments, which summarized the main
problems encountered through the methodology explained above:

1. Increase the power of intervention of the Municipal Participatory Councils in their respective
sub-City Halls (administrative regions of the city), creating open deliberative sessions to
accommodate the proposals and demands of the citizens;

164
 TAD 14 - THE DISCIPLINES AND THE STUDY OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

2. Expand the Open Government Agents Program as a permanent program of education and
citizenship, guaranteeing the territorial articulation and capillarity to reach the largest number
of people;
3. Increase the use of means of communication by the City Hall, publicizing the actions of open
government in newspapers, TVs, buses, public equipment, alternative media, all in dialogue
with the legislature, so that these means are strategic places of permanent communication;
4. Create a network of public servants that involves all municipal secretariats, entities and
equipment, in dialogue with the Intersecretarial Committee of Open Government of the City
of Sao Paulo (CIGA-SP) and the Open SP initiative;
5. Improve and strengthen the network of the municipality's laboratories and innovation spaces,
such as the MobiLab Laboratory, the Digital Patio and LabProdam, making them more open
to social participation, technological innovation and the usage of open data, mapping groups
that already work with free technology (such as free software, open data principles and web
standards), youth groups, startups and collectives in order to create projects related to open
government.

Commitment 5 is the one linked to technological innovation. It is intended to create an environment

of innovation for the development of technologies, through an open space of coworking.

The present paper analyzes the implementation of Commitment 5, which directs the use of new
technologies to the promotion of open government. The commitment has 3 well-defined steps:

a) in the first, it was necessary to map collaboratively the groups that have already been working
with free technology and innovation and to create a public network with the entities interested
in working in partnership with LabProdam;
b) in the second, the LabProdam space should be made available for coworking;
c) in the third, projects should be developed in partnership with these groups, using free tools,
with the purpose of stimulating social participation, transparency and / or accountability.

There is in Sao Paulo a state-owned company that is responsible for the development of operational
systems and solutions for the City Hall, its secretariats and agencies – the Prodam.

Recently, the company has changed its profile from being a “software house” to becoming a B2B
(business-to-business) company, having started to mediate the hiring of other technology development
companies not only for Sao Paulo, but also for other governments.

165
 TAD 14 - THE DISCIPLINES AND THE STUDY OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

So today, Prodam can both develop solutions and provide consulting services for third parties. As it is
a state-owned company, it enjoys certain privileges in the bidding, which makes its use as a B2B asset
very interesting for the government.

But in addition to providing these services, Prodam has become a barn of technological innovation.

For that, a company spin-off, the LabProdam, was created. LabProdam is a space for experimentation
on new technologies.

Commitment 5 of the Sao Paulo City Hall OGP’s action plan establishes that the LabProdam should
become more open, like the MobiLab is.

MobiLab is the Laboratory of Innovation in Mobility of the City of Sao Paulo. It was created to
improve transparency and to encourage the usage of raw data produced by the two agencies of the
Municipal Department of Mobility and Transport.

In 2013, a series of popular protests questioned the increase in bus fares in the city of Sao Paulo.
Protests spread throughout the country, and other demands were incorporated into them, such as
fighting corruption.

In response, the Sao Paulo City Hall released the raw data on the location of the buses in real time,
through an api (application programming interface), which showed the location of 15,000 buses,
updated every 40 seconds. Because of the sheer volume of data, it was necessary to seek new
technology for the manipulation of this data.

Therefore, two hackathons were carried out: the first one for the participants to use the raw data on
the location of the buses to develop solutions, the second using other data also released openly, but
now regarding traffic lights.

The solutions presented at the end of the events were high-quality, and were employed by the City
Hall, that needed to develop fast and efficient solutions.

MobiLab has thus emerged in order to integrate transit and transport policies and to promote
transparency and analysis of the data produced, generating solutions. MobiLab hosts startups in a
coworking environment so that they can produce solutions using open source technology, having
created, for example, games that teach appropriate use of bike paths. It is an active model of
production (not consumption) of technology.

Given the success of this initiative, the City decided to extend it to other areas.

For this reason, the commitment of LabProdam emerged, and now it must follow the MobiLab model
in order to allow the use of open data so that third parties such as entities and groups can experiment
on new open source technologies to develop solutions for government and citizens.

166
 TAD 14 - THE DISCIPLINES AND THE STUDY OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

However, by analyzing the city hall website, it can be seen that, of the 3 stages of commitment 5
(already mentioned), only the first one has been fulfilled. And yet, there is no transparency on this
implementation, since the list of registered companies is not available online. Not even the reports of
the official meetings were published online. The last two steps, which should have been completed in
the year 2017, were not.

Note that for the other commitments of the action plan, the City Hall website provides clear
information on the fulfillment of all the steps in the OGP action plan.

Hence the question that motivated the elaboration of this work: what were the implementation
difficulties that made only goal 5 delayed?

One of the managers of LabProdam was interviewed in March 2018 so that one could better
understand what has been happening in the City of Sao Paulo.

He explains that his mission is to cultivate an ecosystem that integrates the initiatives of technological
innovation of the City Hall: LabProdam, MobiLab, Digital Patio and others.

According to him, the implementation of Goal 5 is delayed due to a series of problems.

First, there is the problem of information security. Although some data today are already released on a
regular basis, there is data that cannot be published, because they refer to the privacy of the people.
He gives as an example the domicile of citizens.

In addition, Prodam maintains the data of its various clients - secretaries, agencies - in its own
datacenter. Prodam is a faithful depositary of this data, and customers rely on the security of the
information. According to the interviewee, "One third of the Prodam’s data center is fines. [...] It's full
of photos ... I mean, there's a gold mine there." These data cannot be released without the consent of
the interested parties.

In general, by removing the possibility of identifying people, it is possible to disseminate generic data.
However, although some data may be opened, it is necessary to compile this data first. The volume of
data is huge, and this preparation work is expensive. The company is not ready to bear this cost.

This was also one of the reasons that led to the adoption of the MobiLab model for the opening of
Prodam’s data. At MobiLab, startups, collectives and youth groups offer collaborative solutions using
open technology. The intention is to do the same in Prodam in order to reduce costs.

However, some secretaries do not feel comfortable with the use of their sensitive data in an open
source environment by multiple people. Not long ago there was an invasion in one of the systems of
one of the municipality’s secretaries, and Prodam was called to solve the problem. After all, Prodam
enjoys the trust of its customers.

167
 TAD 14 - THE DISCIPLINES AND THE STUDY OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

Another problem is the copyright issue. In the open source environment, developers' contributions are
available in a hub, a repository, so that others can use them for different purposes or can simply
improve them. So those who develop often are not even sure whether their idea was used or not. And,
how can this contribution be paid for, if there is not proof it has been actually used?

A third problem is the reliability issue in these startups. Many of these companies are new,
have little maturity. As a result, clients often pay consulting firms to validate the solutions
presented by startups. Thus, an initiative created to reduce the cost, streamline and modernize
the development of solutions has become expensive.

Finally, Prodam needs to upgrade its technology. The software used is outdated. The
company wants to upload its files to the cloud, but some secretaries do not authorize it. This
gap between the technologies used by Prodam and by the participants of Commitment 5 may,
during the collaborative creation of solutions, pose some problems.

CONCLUSION
Based on the analysis of the collected data, it is possible to conclude that the City of Sao Paulo has
faced several difficulties to implement the Commitment 5 of the OGP action plan: basically,
information security, trust in independent developers, and technology outdatedness.

The risks associated with information security are already known to those who develop data-opening
initiatives: "The more easily disparate sources of information can be analyzed, combined, and cross-
referenced, the greater the chance that previously pseudonymous information can be tied to the
identities of particular real people." (Yu & Robinson, 2012, p.206)

The issue of trust is closely linked to the fear of leakage or of misuse of sensitive data.

Finally, the inadequacy of technology demands high investments in a period of notorius economic
crisis, creating an almost insurmountable challenge.

The important thing is to take advantage of this diagnosis to foster changes in the new action plan to
be developed for the years 2018-2019. In fact, "While many government decisions continue to be
taken without sufficient attention to the difficulties of implementation, there is broad recognition now
of the need to take these concerns into account at earlier stages of the policy process." (Howlett &
Ramesh, 1995, p.156).

Indeed, it is expected that the new action plan will find solutions to these diagnosed problems in order
to fulfill its mission of use technology in order to promote open government in the Municipality of
Sao Paulo.

168
 TAD 14 - THE DISCIPLINES AND THE STUDY OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION
REFERENCES
HOWLETT, M.; RAMESH, M.
LATHROP, D.; RUMA, L.
LINDBLOM, C. E. (1959).
Open government partnership.
Transparência. (n.d.).
Transparência. (n.d.).
YU, H.; ROBINSON, D. G.
(1995). Studying public policy: policy cycles and policy
subsystems. Oxford: Oxford University.
(2010). Open Government: collaboration, transparency, and
participation in practice: [n.l.]: O’Reilly Media.
The Science of Muddling Through. Public Administration
Review, 19 (2), 79-88.
(n.a., 2016). Open government partnership [Brochure],
Retrieved Marc 18, 2018, from
http://www.opengovpartnership.org/sites/default/files/091116_
OGP_Booklet_digital.pdf
O que é OGP, Retrieved March 18, 2018, from
http://transparencia.prefeitura.sp.gov.br/governo_aberto/Pagina
s/o-que-e-ogp.aspx
Plano de ação, Retrieved March 18, 2018, from
http://transparencia.prefeitura.sp.gov.br/governo_aberto/Pagina
s/plano-de-acao.aspx
(2012). The new ambiguity of “Open Government”. UCLA
Law Review Discourse, 59, 178-208.
169
TAD 14 - THE DISCIPLINES AND THE STUDY OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

Printed by Print House - ASE

170