Transparency and access to information: A study of demand for accounting information in Brazilian federal universities

Abstract Through Law No 12.527/11, Law on Access to Information, Brazil experiences the beginning of the implementation of a policy on access to public information, which is an instrument of extensive national policy, focusing on transparency and social control of public acts. The International Convergence of Accounting Standards has the same goal, i.e., transparency of the inventory of current state government accounting and reporting practices. The Brazilian federal universities, as public entities, are required to comply with the rules of transparency and inventory accounting. The present study shows the results of a doctoral research that, among other objectives, endeavors to verify the behavior of demand for accounting information in public federal universities, after the implementation of law on access to information. The study included a sample of 59 universities during the first two years of implementation of the law on Access to Information. In this qualitative study, we conducted a bibliographical and documentary research to collect information on the Statistical Reports of the federal universities available on the website Electronic Citizen Service Information Systems. It may be concluded that during the first two years of the law on Access to Information, on average only 61% of the federal universities demanded financial information, despite the efforts of the federal government in disclosing public information on their websites. Furthermore, the total number of demands for information on accounting remained unchanged between the first and second year of implementation of law on Access to Information.