Open data via websites of Brazilian Superior Courts of Justice: Changes between 2013 and 2017

Abstract

We discuss how Brazilian Judicial branch websites have been adapted in face of the necessity to comply with open data guidelines of Access to Information Act (In Portuguese, Lei de Acesso à Informação – LAI). We introduce the idea of social control potential brought by information and communication technologies (ICT). Then, we present a comparative analysis between data collected in 2013 and 2017 with a structured form to check on websites of main Brazilian Superior Courts. The focus was on availability and quality of data about the courts’ activities, management, finances and requests for information. The results highlight changes on those aspects over time: improvements on public data disclosure and problems not solved or which have emerged. One hypothesis is that manager’s culture has more impact than the existence of top-down regulations on access to information, as well as a lack of considering myths and barriers to open data when it comes to making sense of data disclosure and citizen’s perspective. We suggest that continued studies, replicating the observations over time, could be useful to keep up with analyzing the level of adoption of ICT as transparency tools by judicial institutions.

Open government data: A systematic literature review of empirical research

“…In addition to general overview studies, further in-depth analyses of applied standards and directives should be conducted in the future, which in turn will help to provide stronger guidelines for the development of data policies. Regarding the potential impacts of norms and OGD policies, further research is needed to determine how the formulation and implementation of data policies and normative guidelines affect other core aspects, such as subsequent use or the general contribution to success (Kurtz et al, 2019 ). Moreover, it is necessary to investigate, how specific policies that focus on the commercial value of OGD contain the risk of conflict with other open data values (Zuiderwijk et al, 2016 ).…”