Presented at 15th Annual International Conference on Digital Government Research, in Aguascalientes, Mexico, 2014. Paper available: http://bit.ly/1l6KWPB

1. Brazilian Government Open Data:
Implementation,
Challenges, and Potential Opportunities
a developer point of view
15th Annual International Conference on Digital Government Research
Kellyton Brito
Ph.D. Candidate - Pernambuco Federal University
Assistant Professor - Pernambuco Rural Federal University
kellyton@kellyton.com.br
June/ 2014

2. • Introduction
• Brazilian Government Open Data (BGOD)
• Implementation of 2 applications using
(BGOD)
• Discussion of challenges and opportunities
Agenda

3. Open Government
According to T. O'Reilly:
“the use of technology— especially the
collaborative technologies at the heart of Web
2.0— to better solve collective problems at a
city, state, national and international level”
3

4. Open Government
• Well known* benefits:
–To increase of transparency, public
participation and collaboration;
–To decrease of corruption;
–To increase of efficiency and effectiveness
in Government;
–To offer better services;
4

5. Open Government Partnership
• 2011 – Open Government Partnership
(opengovpartnership.org)
• 8 Founding Governments
– Brazil, Indonesia, Mexico, Norway, the Philippines, South
Africa, the United Kingdom and the United States
• Currently: 64 countries
• Open Government Declaration -> Country action plans
5

6. Brazilian Actions
• Access to Information Law (2011)
– Active and reative publishing
• Open Data Portal: dados.gov.br
– 238 datasources and 2132 resources (june/14)
• Lots of specific portals
– Cities, government agencies
• Hacker marathons and application contests
6

7. Brazilian Application Contests
• Recife Application Contest1
– Launched at the same time that City Open Data
Portal - July/2013
– Objective: "to build applications or conceptual
projects that enhance life in Recife.“
– Total prizes: US$15,000
• First prize for app category: US$ 4,500.00
– Only Recife citizens
– 34 projects + 23 applications
1 http://cidadaointeligente.rec.br/
7

8. Brazilian Application Contests
• RioApps application Contest2
– Launched August/2013
– Data from Rio de Janeiro open data portal
– Objective: "to create software applications that
improve the city and the lives of its residents,
businesses and tourists.”
– US$40,000 through thirteen prizes, including one
"popular choice" category
– 264 applications
2 http://rioapps.com.br
8

9. Implementation
9

10. The Applications
• Cidadao Recifense (Recife Citizen)
– First prize winner of Recife application contest
– Data about budget, education, health and tourism.
– http://cidadaorecifense.com.br
• Rio Inteligente (Smart Rio)
– Second best voted on health category.
– A subset of Cidadao Recifense. Only health data.
• First challenge: the impossibility to develop the same app
– http://rio.cidadaointeligente.com
10

11. Functionalities
11

12. 12

13. 13

14. Main Functionalities
• Health-units finder
– Where is the nearest?
• Hospital, Emergency Unit, Family Clinics, Rehab, etc?
14

15. 15

16. 16

17. 17

18. 18

19. 19

20. 20

21. Main Functionalities
• Health-units finder
– Where is the nearest?
• Hospital, Emergency Unit, Family Clinics, Rehab, etc?
• Vaccination Card
– Vaccination: well-know method to prevent many
diseases
– How to remember when to get vaccinated?
21

22. Vaccination Card – Hard paper
22

23. 23

24. 24

25. 25

26. *Temporarily down26

27. Main Functionalities
• Health-units finder
– Where is the nearest?
• Hospital, Emergency Unit, Family Clinics, Rehab, etc?
• Vaccination Card
– Vaccination: well-know method to prevent many
diseases
– How to remember when to get vaccinated?
• Several functionalities only on Recife’s site
27

29. High Level Architecture
29

30. 30

31. Challenges and
Opportunities
From a Developer Point of View
31

32. Challenges
• Difficulty of governments to provide useful
websites based on their data
• Multiple and decentralized data sources
– National open data portal already exists
– Rio de Janeiro and Recife (and lots of cities and
government agencies) have their portal
– Some divergences between all of them
32

33. Challenges
• Lack of standards for data publishing
– Each publisher chooses what and how to publish
– No compliance with national repository
– No standards among cities
– No standards within the city or agency or domain
Webservices, CSV, XML, JSON , Plain text...
33

34. Challenges
• "Zombie" data
– Dumps of databases
• Even if accessed through an online API
– No updates policies
• One-way data
– How to return data to government?
• How to measure the impact?
34

35. Opportunities
• General public can provide some services better
than the government, using their (our) data
• The creation of a framework of republishing
government data:
– Common Architecture
– Pluggable
– Through an online API
– According to common patterns/standards
• The creation of a sustainable business model
for this kind of application
GOV
Public
35

36. Brazilian Government Open Data:
Implementation,
Challenges, and Potential Opportunities
a developer point of view
15th Annual International Conference on Digital Government Research
Kellyton Brito
Ph.D. Candidate - Pernambuco Federal University
Assistant Professor - Pernambuco Rural Federal University
kellyton@kellyton.com.br
June/ 2014