Transparency Meets Management: A Monitoring and Evaluating Tool for Governmental Projects

Abstract

The Brazilian government is maintaining several digital inclusion projects, providing computers and Internet connection to developing regions around the country. However, these projects can only succeed if they are constantly assessed; namely, the projects infrastructure deployment must be closely monitored and evaluated. In this paper, we introduce a system called SIMMC, which is currently monitoring and evaluating more than 4,500 computing devices from Brazilian digital inclusion projects. This system is innovative because, in addition to being used by the government for managing and expanding its projects, the collected data is also publicly available on a web page, allowing the citizens to follow the projects' deployment. We describe the SIMMC architecture, reporting some techniques used to optimize its data analysis processes, and describe how the information acquired and presented by the system has been used to enable public administration overhaul and improve efficiency on the project management, as well as its strategic use for security, theft, and defrauding. 1 Gesac project (Portuguese only): http://www.mc.gov.br/gesac. 2 Quilombos are communities founded in colonial Brazil, organized by fugitive slaves and located in inaccessible areas. 3 Digital Cities project (Portuguese only): http://www.mc.gov.br/ cidades-digitais. 4 Telecentres project (Portuguese only): http://www.mc.gov.br/telecentros.

Untitled

“…Other Brazilian researchers claim that the implementation of monitoring and evaluation systems can improve government results, but challenges include data acquisition, data transformation, and interface design. Moreover the data is often acquired from thousands of non-standardized devices scattered across the country, sometimes with limited internet connectivity (Trois et al, 2017). Other Polish scientists underlined the importance of risk management in public project monitoring.…”

“…The survey results included 379 SMEs from the countries of the Visegrad Group, i.e. Czech Republic (39), Poland (156), Hungary (94), Slovakia (90). Most of the surveyed SMEs from the V4 countries were located in city from 150000 to 500000 residents (117), and city from 20000 to 150000 residents (99).…”

O Uso de Redes Sociais como Mecanismos para Promoção de Transparência e Participação dos Stakeholders no contexto dos Projetos

“…Quando falamos sobre transparência nos projetos, as pessoas tendem a associá-la apenas aos projetos públicos com a divulgação de informações aos cidadãos [Trois et al 2017] ou, ainda, aos projetos de desenvolvimento de software open source, com a abertura total dos artefatos dos projetos para toda a comunidade [Dabbish et al 2013]. No entanto,é possível perceber que a necessidade de transparência está presente no dia-a-dia de todos os projetos, especialmente quando olhamos para os construtos subjacentesà transparência apresentados em [Bernstein 2012], quais sejam: monitoramento, visibilidade do processo, vigilância e divulgação; e para a seguinte categorização em pares da transparência relatadas em [Hood and Heald 2006]: transparência ascendente e descendente, transparência externa e interna, transparência de eventos e processos, transparência nominal e efetiva, transparência em retrospecto e em tempo real.…”

Blended Integrated Open Data: dados abertos públicos integrados

“…Os dados foram extraídos das bases de dados dos projetos SIMMCTIC e LDE. O SIMMCTIC 2 [Trois et al 2017] é um projeto de monitoramento de políticas públicas do MCTIC (Ministério da ciência, tecnologia, inovac ¸ões e comunicac ¸ões). Esse projeto realiza o monitoramento de mais de seis mil pontos de presenc ¸a, coletando informac ¸ões de uso de rede a cada cinco minutos e informac ¸ões de inventário diariamente.…”