Advancing Legislative Transparency and Efficiency in Brazil: A Review of the Interlegis Initiative
About the Senado Federal of Brazil. Written on January, 2022
Introduction
In the era of digitalisation, governments worldwide are exploring innovative ways to foster transparency, increase efficiency, and enhance public participation in legislative processes. This essay critically examines a case presentation on Interlegis, an initiative aimed at achieving these objectives in Brazil. Interlegis is a project led by the Senate School of Government, seeking to integrate, modernise, and render transparent the proceedings of states and local legislatures across Brazil. This essay provides a comprehensive overview of Interlegis, evaluating its approach, its products, and its potential for enhancing transparency and efficiency in the legislative process.
Background of Interlegis
Interlegis was established about twenty years ago with initial funding from the Inter-American Development Bank. Its initial mandate was to provide local and state legislatures with computers and internet access to foster digital literacy and connectivity. However, about ten years ago, the focus of the programme shifted towards developing open-source software to promote legislative transparency, integration, and modernisation across all levels of the Brazilian Federation.
The present mission of Interlegis underscores the significance of digital transformation in enhancing the legislative process. This transformation is increasingly relevant given the current challenges that need to be addressed in Brazil's legislative infrastructure. Interlegis develops products for use by state and local legislatures and often collaborates with other legislative IT teams for software development.
Interlegis Products and Services
Interlegis has developed several products and services over the years, most notably the SAPL (System for Support of the Legislative Process). The SAPL is a system designed to track the legislative process flow, offering citizens and legislators easy access to relevant law-making information in real-time.
Interlegis also offers a customisable website to legislatures, which enables them to share essential legislative information in compliance with the Brazilian law on active transparency. The software suite also includes e-democracy, an interactive platform that fosters genuine public engagement in the legislative process. This tool allows citizens to engage deeply in the legislative process, from posing questions during public hearings to suggesting new provisions to a bill.
Interlegis has also developed the "Local Legislatures Landscape" (Panorama Municipal in Portuguese), a software that collates data from various public sources to provide comprehensive information about legislatures in Brazil. The team is also working on adding a dashboard to this software to enable multi-variable comparisons within the database.
Furthermore, Interlegis hosts the IT infrastructure for over a thousand local legislatures within the Senate's IT structure. This is both an economic and security benefit, especially for small legislatures with limited budgets.
The Future of Interlegis
Looking forward, Interlegis plans to develop a system to manage administrative documents, aiming to make legislatures paper-free. Collaborative software development with different local legislative IT departments is also in the pipeline. Moreover, Interlegis is considering adding data on the federal budget allocated to municipalities.
Importantly, all Interlegis products are open-source and open data. While hosting requires a cooperation agreement to comply with Brazilian legislation on internet and data protection, the products themselves are available without bureaucratic hurdles.
Conclusion
Interlegis is an instrumental initiative in fostering transparency, enhancing efficiency, and promoting public participation in Brazil's legislative process. The program, with its innovative approach and products, addresses the emerging needs of modern society for transparency in governance and legislative houses. It also addresses the challenges posed by personnel shortages in the civil service by promoting digital transformation.
By leveraging digital transformation, Interlegis is not only providing a solution to administrative and legislative efficiency but also ensuring a more sustainable way of archiving vital legislative documents. As the initiative continues to evolve and expand its range of services, it stands to play an even more significant role in shaping Brazil's legislative landscape, bolstering public trust, and fostering a more inclusive and participatory democratic process. As the case of Interlegis illustrates, the marriage of technology and governance can yield transformative results, pushing the boundaries of what is possible in legislative efficiency and transparency. Ultimately, the success of the Interlegis initiative offers valuable lessons for other regions grappling with similar challenges and serves as a compelling model of innovation in legislative governance.