1 out of 4 federal agencies has become more secretive under Bolsonaro

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PUBLIC TRANSPARENCY

1 out of 4 Brazilian agencies has become more secretive under Bolsonaro

By Luiz Fernando Toledo

Access to information symbol in brazil

Credit: Roberto Stuckert Filho/PR

The Brazilian Access to Information Law (LAI or FOIA) will be ten years old in May 2022. Despite some advances in open government policies, experts have been saying that the law is being ignored by current President Jair Bolsonaro, who has imposed secrecy on data and documents of public interest in the federal government.

Since it was regulated in May 2012, more than 1 million requests have been answered by the federal government.

Not all requests result in a satisfactory answer. The government says that 7 out of 10 requests are granted.

A question is usually not granted when it is not considered a request for information, like when citizens makes a public service complaint, for example, or when the information is confidential.

Historically, the number of denied requests has been stable. But something different happened in 2020, the first year of the new coronavirus pandemic.

There was a spike in denied requests - more than 35% were rejected. In 2021, the numbers returned to the historical average.

The federal government says there has not been an increase in denied responses. Because of the Covid-19 pandemic, there has been a flurry of requests from people asking for access to Emergency Aid, a US$ 150 benefit (600 Brazilian reals), paid to the most vulnerable families during the lockdown period.

The numbers show that, in fact, the main reason to deny access in 2020 was that the questions were not FOIA requests for information, which accounted for almost 60% of cases of denied requests. The other reasons to deny a request dropped in 2020.

A word cloud analysis containing the text of each denied request due to "not being a FOIA request" ended up finding words commonly related to the emergency aid, with words like " meu (my) + auxílio (aid) + emergencial (emergency) + parcela (installment) "

word cloud containing words related to denied requests in 2020,
such as my, aid, emergencial and installment

Although the overall numbers do not show a significant increase in denied applications, with the exception of 2020, an analysis by agency shows that some became less transparent in recent years.

Historically these are the ten federal agencies that denied more requests to access information under FOIA (considering only those with 1,000 or more requests received).


Under Bolsonaro (2019-2021), 1 in 4 federal agencies government has been denying more information than in previous governments (Dilma - 2013 to 2015 and Dilma/Temer - 2016 to 2018), considering only those that have received more than 1,000 requests for information since 2013. These are the top 10.

The federal government's most secretive agency is Gabinete de Segurança Institucional da Presidência da República (GSI-PR). A word cloud analysis shows that the most common keywords on a denied request are related to entry ("entrada") and exit ("saída") records ("registros") at Palácio do Planalto, where Bolsonaro works. word cloud containing words related to denied requests in 2020,
such as my, aid, emergencial and installment

Check the data on Github.