Open Government Data in Brazil A Systematic Review of its Uses and Issues

Context: With the advancement of the internet and information systems, more and more data is available to the public. Governments around the world are trying to find the best way to present their citizens with relevant information and transparency of public actions, expenditures, and investments. But how is this being approached in Brazil, in the federal, state, and municipal spheres of government? Objective: To find what initiatives are being conducted in Brazil, how open government data is being used, what types of data are most used in studies, and what are the challenges to implement open government data across the country through a systematic review of the literature. At last, based on the difficulties related to open government data, is suggested the first actions that should be taken to solve it. Method: A search on the main repositories to find literature that pertains to Open Government Data initiatives in Brazil, followed by a systematic review and classification of said literature. Results: There are not many research documents available that use open government data in the context of Brazil. Of those that exist, the main area that has studies on involve politicians and their expenses, and also education investments and results of said investments. Other subjects and uses of open government data are shown in this paper as a means to show that the interest in said data is spread across several areas. Conclusion: Many steps need to be done before an effective use of the government open datasets can be made. In most studies analyzed, researchers needed to take a first step of treatment of the data available before effectively using it. This one difficulty, if solved, would make a great impact on the use of government data. The conclusion of this paper is that there is much ground work that needs to be done yet to give companies and researchers a footing to make discoveries from the datasets.