Commemorative International Dossier on 10 years of the Freedom of Information Act in Brazil

Revista da CGU, in alliance with the Brazilian Society of Public Administration - SBAP and the Network for Accountability in Mexico, presents a call for the special dossier Ten years of the Freedom of Information Act: trajectories, advanced and challenges, for publication in May 2022. The editorial coordination of the dossier will be carried out by the guest editors Lourdes Morales (University of Guadalajara), Karina Furtado Rodrigues (School of Command and General Staff of the Army - ECEME) and Temístocles Murilo de Oliveira Jr. (Chico Mendes Institute for Biodiversity Conservation - ICMBio).

Freedom of information is broadly recognized as the sunlight to disinfect bad practices that depend on the darkness. Although transparency representing a necessary condition to many positive aspects of democracy (such as decentralized control, anti-corruption, and accountability), transparency per se does not automatically lead governments to better governance.

We need to go beyond the notion of the right to information as the "silver bullet" against corruption or as a fundamental right without contradictions or ambiguities. What is the access to information that we need to promote a better, fair, equitable and efficient government? What does it take for institutions to promote freedom of information?

Close to the 10th anniversary of the Brazilian Freedom of Information Act, and after two decades of the beginning of the global diffusion of these policies, it is time to look closer at what we have built so far - our trajectory, experiences, advances, and challenges – in order to better envision future changes. Such analyses must entail the subtleties of gradients between opposite sides of the same issue: disclosure and secrecy or exposure and protection.

Navigating between extremes may dig up many contradictions that can impact differently distinct public policy subsystems. Whether researching personal data protection, public health, environment, national defense, corruption, or any other realm of public policy, we expect articles to tackle these issues with methodological refinement, utilizing evidence-based or well methodologically structured approaches. We are also interested in studies: that analyze Brazil in a comparative perspective with other experiences with Freedom of Information in Latin American and the Caribbean and other regions; that report on experiences on the implementation and evaluation of Freedom of Information in public organizations; and that explore the contact and interchange between the public sector and private and third sectors.  

Among the topics of interest in the dossier are: Freedom of Information in Theoretical Perspective; Freedom of Information in Comparative Perspective; Freedom of Information, Public Policy, and International Relations; Freedom of Information, Accountability, and Corruption; Freedom of Information, Health, and the Pandemic; Freedom of Information, Environment, and Sustainable Development; Freedom of Information, Misinformation, and Culture of Scandal; Freedom of Information, National Defense, and Strategic Information; Freedom of Information and Data Protection; Freedom of Information and Reform Agenda; Freedom of Information in Public Organizations; Freedom of Information at Federal, State, and Local Levels; Freedom of Information and Knowledge Management; Freedom of Information for populations in situations of vulnerability and gender equality; Methodological issues applied to the analysis of freedom of information.

The policies and guidelines for submitting contributions for the dossier are:

1) the works must observe and contribute to the objective and themes of this dossier;

2) the contributions can be written in Portuguese, English or Spanish, being mandatory the presentation of the title, abstract and up to five keywords in these three languages;

3) when submitting this call, the section "Ten years of the FOI Act: trajectories, advances and challenges" must be indicated, by marking this specific field in the checkbox labeled “section”;

4) citations and bibliographic references must comply with the norms of the American Psychological Association (APA);

5) scientific articles must aim at the construction and consolidation of theoretical or theoretical-empirical knowledge, containing up to 7,000 words, with originality and clear and consistent presentation of the methodology, question and research objectives being mandatory;

6) the essays must address specific empirical or theoretical themes relevant to access to information due to their originality, impact or controversy, containing up to 4,000 words;

7) technical reports must present practical discussions on experiences related to mechanisms of access to information and recommendations for better design, implementation and evaluation of policies, and must contain up to 4,000 words with the following proposed structure: i) introduction: context, background, diagnosis and objective; ii) body of work: practical discussions on experiences related to mechanisms of access to information and recommendations for better policy design, implementation and evaluation; iii) recommendations: practical guidelines for similar cases, necessary adjustments in legislation, policies and arrangements, guidelines for innovation, etc; iv) references: list of documents, reports, regulations, bibliography and other references that were cited.

Deadlines

• Launch of the call for papers: Aug 25th, 2021

• Closing of the receipt of contributions: Dec 24th, 2021

• The result of the evaluation process: Mar 18th, 2022

• Launch of the special dossier: May 12th, 2022

Submission

To submit your article, essay or technical report, see https://revista.cgu.gov.br/Revista_da_CGU/about/submissions