A transparência em Universidades Federais Brasileiras: uma análise dos mecanismos de governança

Abstract

Transparency, as well as access to public information, is implicitly foreseen in the Federal Constitution, becoming a means of bringing the State closer to its citizens, since it makes it possible to render accounts and to accompany public activities. In this context, the Brazilian Federal Universities have great social importance, besides being subject to an obligation to render accounts to both the society and the control bodies. Thus, it helps to understand the relevance of these institutions, the fact that, according to the Censo da Educação Superior de 2016, there are a total of 1.072.379 undergraduate students at these universities. Also, the issue of public resources is highlighted, where higher education consumed about R$ 79.7 billion of the budget of the Ministry of Education in 2017. In view of this, there is a need for transparency in these institutions. However, in order to be successful in these affirmations, it is necessary that the information have relevant and timely character, publicizing to the maximum the general context of the management that involves each public entity. In parallel with the growing concern with transparency and access to information, governance is consolidated as something relevant in the public sphere, capable of helping to strengthen transparency and dissemination of information. Thus, this research aims to analyze the mechanisms of governance used for transparency in Brazilian Federal Universities. In view of this, a research instrument was built, inspired by the principles and practices of governance, used to collect information from electronic portals and Management Reports of Brazilian Federal Universities, in order to verify the transparency of such entities. Sequentially, through the clusters analysis technique, the universities were grouped into two clusters, which signal the level of transparency of these institutions. Complementary statistical tests corroborated the distinction between clusters formed. Finally, a table with a proposal for intervention was presented, with the purpose of improving the mechanisms of transparency analyzed, focusing on corrective measures that may help in the better disclosure of governance practices that have the most deficient indexes.