Transparency and Readability of the Financial Statements of the Ceará Government during the Covid-19 Pandemic

Abstract

The context of exceptionality generated by the Covid-19 pandemic has made once insurmountable rules more flexible, bringing to the state the legal duty to act more transparently and understandably to avoid flaws in public spending. Based on the specific state legislation on data transparency in this period, this article aims to present the disclosure of information by the Government of the state of Ceará according to State Law nº 17,257 of August 3rd, 2020, and analyze the readability of the Explanatory Notes of the General Balance Sheet and the Social Balance Sheet for the financial year 2020 (Governo do Estado do Ceará, 2020). The case study demonstrates a cut in the control criteria of public spending from March 2020 to March 2021, evaluating the mechanism used descriptively and qualitatively when investigating the case of transparency in the scope of the information presented by the Ceará government and the application of the Flesch and Gunning-FOG indices adapted for the Portuguese language. In the end, we indicated some improvements in the level of systems integration. In conclusion, the degree of transparency was achieved, presenting total compliance with the specified information and median textual comprehensibility in six of the seven categories.