The Brazilian Transparency Portal

Abstract

One of the e-government goals is to enable public access of official information to all citizens. The diversity of the audiences may imply that the way the exposed information is understood may not be homogeneous. An evaluation of the Brazilian Transparency Portal, conducted as part of this research, has corroborated the previous assertion. This evaluation showed that the official classification may limit understanding depending on the public, because it may be unclear or not widespread. Although non-governmental agencies were satisfied with the way information was classified, regular users had several problems for finding information in the Portal. In addition, different users identified distinct classifications for the same data item. Based on these results, a framework was developed to improve the usability of the Portal. A new form of user interface adaptability called “adaptability by classification” was proposed within this framework. The novel aspect of the framework is to allow data presentation in different ways according to the classifications expected by groups of individuals with the main goal of increasing digital inclusion.