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.