Interlegis Program in Brazil: Use of Web 2.0, Collaborative Tools and Free

Software in Legislative PowerMATHEUS, Ricardo, CRANTSCHANINOV, Tamara Ilinsky & NERLING, Marcelo Arno

University of São Paulo – USP & GETULIO VARGAS FOUNDATION - FGV

ricardomatheus@gmail.comABSTRACTSince the 80's, education (training, education and training per se) in thelegislative context meant the employee training standards and rules arisingfrom the specific laws of "home" legislation. Analogous to the process ofstructural changes in economy and politics in the late 80's, Brazil alsopromoted the modernization of their legislative houses. Through funding fromthe Interamerican Development Bank, it was possible to promote the programInterLegis. The objective of this program was the modernization andintegration of the Legislature in its federal, state and municipal levels andpromoting greater transparency and interaction with society that Power. Soonbecame apparent that the model open, collaborative and open management ofknowledge and information InterLegis was an innovative model, but aboveall, there were still limits and challenges to the Legislature and can educationand development of officials and parliamentarians of the Legislative Houses.This article will seek to identify the limits and challenges of improving thisinnovative model of using free software and web-based collaborativeenvironment and information and communication technologies.Methodologically this article is structured from a previous exploratoryresearch, checking conditions and models of InterLegis, besides theparticipation of the authors within the mailing lists and use of informationpackets and applications available on the web environment of the program. Itwas performed an exploratory research the topic of collaborative scientificproduction, electronic government and electronic governance and the use offree software by government, where they found several articles and texts. As afurther step was made a theoretical framework on these themes that helpedformulate the analysis of the limits and challenges of the openmodel, collaborative and open management of knowledge and informationInterLegis.Keywords : Free Software, Web 2.0, Collaborative Tools, LegislativePower, Brazil.

IntroductionEducation - formation, training and continuing education – at the legislativecontext has meaning only a meager training of the servers / staff /commissioners, according to specific “in-House” standards. Theprofessionalization of human resources, the integratedwork, modernization, transparency and interaction with society in thelegislative houses of local, state and own Senate and House of Representativesis a task for the consolidation of emerging brazilian young democracy.We point to the currents and trends of global thinking and local levels thatform the agenda for the management of the legislature in Democratic State ofRight, to the achievement of the modernization of the national legislature. Wespeak of the construction of e-Legislature in Brazil. In Brazil, the wave ofmodernization of the legislature came through the 'InterLegis Program', whoseproblem is modernization and integration of the Legislature in its federal, stateand municipal levels and to promote greater transparency and interaction ofthat Power with society.

The case Interlegis in BrazilThe Interlegis is the product of an integrated process for modernization of thenational legislature. The idea was the institutionalization of a Participation andIntegration Net of the Legislative within a Program for Reform andModernization of the State and Parliament. The goal was to articulateinternally the legislature and also the actual integration of civil society in acontinuous, effective and transparent, public, republican, how could beexpected. The advances in technology and its focus on the legislature allowedthe formation of the Integration of the Legislative, with a contract signed on27/07/1999, worth $ 50 million. Fifty per cent financed by the IDB and $ 25million remaining, as national counterpart. The execution of the contract wastumultuous.In essence, the process of modernization of the Legislature was beingimplemented on the idea of virtual community, with a view to forming anational law system that would improve communication and information flowamong legislators, with more efficiency and competence of the legislativehouses.The Experience more consecrating of GIAL List - Legislative Advisory GroupInterlegis - was the participation of students of Public Policy Management ofUniversity of Sao Paulo in this environment. All the academics attending thecourse 'Legislative and Public Policy Management', taught by ProfessorMarcelo Arno Nerling, were welcomed by the List and locked in a virtualenvironment very close contact with the real issues of national legislative and

pointed, with its production technique, important and fruitful discussions thathave transformed the environment in a span of activity conducted in regulareducation classroom without any social interaction.There are currently three: the GIAL (Interlegis Legislative AdvisoryGroup), the GITEC (Interlegis Technology Group) and GICOM (InterlegisCommunications Group). Therefore, InterLegis seeks to create greaterintegration of the legislative power through more intensive use of informationtechnology, internet and the concept of virtual community as a way to improvethe performance of legislators and legislative houses.Another positive point of InterLegis is the use and distribution of open sourcesoftware, as an economic advantage to the Public Administration. Animportant factor is the possession of source code, allowing customization ofapplications according to the needs of each legislative house user. Inaddition, the Legislative Houses encourages Interlegis to regularize theirtechnology platforms, migrating to open source software, preventing unevensoftware licenses.Result of the characteristics of use of Web 2.0, collaborative tools like wikis andalso the voluntary collaboration based on trust, there are the communities ofnetworks GIAL, GITEC and GICOM. These communities are basically aInterLegis strategy to provide environments to exchange of information andknowledge through the use of ICTs, because as noted above, themethodological difficulties and financial resources to knowledge productionby old methods, such as classroom and textbooks do not meeting the goals thatthe program had to meet all the national territory.

Limits and challenges of Interlegis ModelThe search for technical improvement from the exchange ofinformation, provided by the use of the System InterLegis, can be framed asone of their own objectives of the new public management models, especiallywhen dealing with the New Public Management - NPM. Discussions on thereform of the traditional state fell on the possibilities of having a more efficientand effective, based on results, not on processes. In this context, thecommunication system for the improvement of public bureaucracy is clearlyruled by the new model for reform. Access to information, as detailed by Póand Prado [4], is a recent agenda, of the 1990, that comes to increase thetransparency of governments and thus enhance accountability. In sum, we canconsider that the InterLegis system has ideological framework withingovernment to be developed and implemented.Despite of being in the wave of transparency and accountability that camefrom the 1990s, the limits of the system are still huge. It is not known whetherthe information circulates evenly throughout the country, reaching isolatedareas that really need technical support and training. Thus, the interaction isoften restricted to a few localities, and even fewer servers, which are evidentduring the discussions and constrain new actors to participate in the exchangeof information and problem resolution. These are problems that concern anysphere of public administration, because it is the coexistence and humanrelationships. Just as it is necessary to articulate solutions to these dilemmas inreal life, you also need to think about strategies for living in the virtualnetwork.It is important, at a broader view, recognize access to information as acondition sine qua non of democracy. Thus, the exchange of experiencesfacilitates transparency and accountability, both with respect to horizontal(internally to the government) and its vertical (government to society) ofaccountability. But to actually be an instrument to control society, we mustinclude and provide access to channels of InterLegis to population, under therisk of having the insulation of the information, creating again an technocraticcycle in public bureaucracy.