Emergency in Access to Information: The Use of the Access to Information Law in the Federal Government During the Covid-19 Pandemic

Abstract

The research carried out within the scope of the project “Covid-19: access to public information”, monitors and analyzes the texts of information requests addressed to the federal government related to Covid-19 and the respective responses, through the Electronic System of the Citizen Information Service, created to comply with the Access to Information Law (AIL). The partial results of the research point out three strong tones regarding the purposes of the requests: request clarifications, demand explanations and measures and ask for economic protection. The studies about the first half of 2020 showed that the majority of requests for information dealt with emergency aid. On the side of the answers, it is noteworthy that the overwhelming majority was officially reported as “forwarding to the e-Ombudsman” or “not being considered a request for information”. Concludes on the need for a broad campaign of clarification on which channel to turn between e-SIC and e-Ouv, not only for the citizen but also for the federal public bureaucracy.