Institutionalization of the Ombudsman and Users Participation in Local Governments: Analysis of the Municipalities of Santa Catarina

Abstract

Since 2017, every Brazilian public organization must regulate an administrative ombudsman and make electronic channels available with a letter, like a menu, containing a detailed list of its services. Many of them use software and service portals, such as the federal government and Santa Catarina. In this state, the Federation of Municipalities offers a tool for publishing the letters, including channels for communication with ombudsmen and for evaluating the services and assistance received. This exploratory research uses descriptive statistics on secondary data from official sources to assess the institutionalization and performance of ombudsmen and the use of protection and defense channels and instruments by users in the 295 city halls of Santa Catarina. Regarding institutionalization, the paper analyzes the structure (existence of sector or position and local regulation), autonomy (hierarchical position and nature of the ombudsman's bond with the city hall), and work capacity (number of public servers in the sector and the educational level of the agent responsible). The performance of the ombudsman refers to conducting surveys with citizens and publishing periodic reports; the use by society, the number of evaluations, complaints, questions, and suggestions sent by users, in relation to the population size and total services available in the letters. The results partially confirm the initial hypothesis, that institutionalization is low, and the performance of ombudsmen is very weak, while the use of instruments by society is relatively low. Despite this, there was a great advance in the number of municipalities that have published the letter of services, from 19% in 2018 to at least 90% in 2021