SUMMARY
Public contracts for infrastructure investments are key to improving people’s lives and increasing economic growth. Yet infrastructure contracts, like all public contracts, often are not made available in an open data format, which makes it harder to monitor the progress and quality of such projects. But in Brazil, the government is working with civil society to address this gap. Read on to learn about the country’s new commitment to apply open contracting principles to federal infrastructure projects.
Infrastructure projects—like railways, roads, hospitals, and schools—are key to improving people’s lives and increasing economic growth. Undertaking these critical investments requires a staggering amount of money. According to the Open Contracting Partnership (OCP), countries would need about USD 97.5 trillion in infrastructure investments alone to meet the Sustainable Development Goals.
However, contracts for infrastructure projects, like all public contracts, often are not made available in an open data format. OCP estimates that details on only three percent of public contracts are published and that infrastructure projects often fall short in terms of quality and coverage. To address these gaps, which will help prevent and detect corruption and inefficiencies, governments need to invest in transparency and public participation measures to monitor the progress of public projects.
For the first time in Brazil’s OGP action plan, the Office of the Comptroller General (CGU) committed to doing just that by applying open contracting principles to federal infrastructure projects. Read more to learn the history of public procurement reform in Brazil, the current legal framework and existing initiatives, and details of how the federal government will fulfill this new commitment.
High risk of corruption
The considerable investment needed to complete large-scale infrastructure projects also puts them at risk for corruption. This was also the case in the construction of the Itaipu Hydroelectric Dam on the Paraná River, which runs between Brazil and Paraguay. During the procurement stage of the project, contracts were awarded to private companies with ties to political figures.
Pictured: Itaipu Dam (Credit: Wikimedia)
Gaps in quality and coverage
The gaps in the quality and coverage of infrastructure projects have real consequences for people’s everyday lives. In a 2022 survey of 1,156 families in 15 favelas from five municipalities across the Greater Rio de Janeiro metropolitan region, researchers found that 32 percent of households experienced a power outage, while 26 percent had water services interrupted for longer than 24 hours.
Pictured: A favela in Rio de Janeiro (Credit: AXP Photography via Unsplash)
Public Procurement in Brazil
In 2023, the Lula administration announced a new Growth Acceleration Program (Programa de Aceleração do Crescimento, or PAC in Portuguese), which aims to invest about USD 240 billion in infrastructure projects over the same period as the action plan. While such a sizable investment is instrumental to economic growth, it also increases the risk of corrupt activities in the public procurement process, like embezzlement and kickbacks. Corruption in public procurement often results in a low value for money, incomplete projects, and social and environmental harm.
Yet Brazil is up to the challenge. According to the 2022 edition of the Global Data Barometer, the government already requires the collection and publication of data related to most key policy areas at risk of corruption. It also currently publishes public procurement data in a machine-readable format.
Continuing this work, government and civil society representatives had anti-corruption in mind when they came together to co-create the 2023–2027 action plan. Transparency International Brazil, with key partner organizations, advocated for a new commitment on open contracting in infrastructure projects, which became one of the most popular suggestions during the public consultation sessions. Izabela Moreira Corrêa, the former Secretary for Public Integrity at the CGU, explained the popularity of this commitment in a recent interview with OGP. For her, “Transparency and active social participation in infrastructure projects are key to safeguarding the public interest, ensuring that projects align with government objectives and meet citizens’ needs while responsibly utilizing public resources. The strong interest shown by civil society in this commitment—especially during the process of selecting themes for the sixth OGP action plan—reflects a desire for active engagement on this issue.”
Now that the commitment has been officially included in the action plan, work is already underway to ensure it delivers on the promise of greater transparency and participation in the public procurement process.
The Transformative Power of Open Contracting
Brazil’s Legal Framework and Existing Initiatives
According to the commitment text, Brazil’s legal framework requires transparency in public procurement, alongside other government activities. This includes the release of information on bidding and contracting processes and the publication of environmental information, especially on the socio-environmental impact of major infrastructure projects. One is a general transparency portal, which allows users to view information like the budget, tenders, and contracts for infrastructure projects. The other is the Obras.gov portal, which publishes investment project registration data, including those funded by the federal government. Government agencies also have sectoral-level plans for infrastructure projects that are not always included in these portals. In terms of public participation, Brazil has someregulations that limit opportunities for participation to the contracting stage of major projects. Additionally, public hearings are mandatory only during the environmental licensing process. Members of the public are often not included in other phases, such as in defining the priorities for future projects or evaluating alternatives to a proposed solution.
Open contracting principles work best when public procurement data is centralized and interoperable with other key types of data, like company beneficial ownership and political finance information. This technical solution is even more effective when paired with efforts to empower members of the public to monitor how contracts are awarded and whether projects are completed. The new contracting commitment on infrastructure projects takes these best practices into account by aiming to improve data fragmentation across different agencies and increase public participation.
Details of the Commitment
The government and civil society organizations are collaborating to implement the following activities under this commitment and hope to complete it in 2027, with the goal of improving the contracting process in time to monitor the allocation of PAC funding.
Mapping best practices
First, a mapping exercise will identify the best practices to improve infrastructure transparency, public participation, and public oversight of these investments at each stage of the project cycle. As of December 2024, the government has begun working on a diagnostic report of the current state of transparency in infrastructure projects, which will include recommendations.
Pictured: An implementation session for Brazil’s sixth national action plan. (Credit: CGU)
Creating a space for permanent dialogue
The government will create a permanent space to discuss improvements to the infrastructure project cycle with members of the public. The results of the mapping exercise will also be used to propose new regulations to ensure public participation for each agency.
Pictured: An implementation session for Brazil’s sixth national action plan. (Credit: CGU)
Improving the Obras.gov portal
The portal will be updated to centralize all federal infrastructure projects, with information on the planning, implementation, and monitoring stages. The government will also use plain language to describe each project, which will make the portal easier to use.
Photo Credit: Hal Gatewood via Unsplash
For Guilherme Fortuna, General Coordinator for the Management of the Transparency Portal and member of the CGU, the stakes are high. “There is a lot of progress to be made in terms of better showing the total composition of this [type of] investment. What is the entire cycle of this investment? What is being invested there? In a way that society can better understand these resources, better access these resources and also, fundamentally, participate,” he explains.
This commitment has also been successfully accepted as part of the Open Gov Challenge, an ongoing initiative from OGP that recognizes ambitious reforms from members in key policy areas.
Looking Ahead
The next two years will be critical for Brazil as it works to improve the availability and usability of its contracting data before the PAC funding period ends. Renato Morgado, Program Manager at Transparency International Brazil, explains that open government provides a way forward to ensure infrastructure investments meet their social, economic, and environmental goals, especially in involving communities most affected by such projects.
Looking ahead to the next few years, he says, “We expect the concrete improvement of policies and practices of transparency and social participation in the planning, contracting and implementation cycle of infrastructure in the country and in carrying out these processes, through the improvement of standards, so that even when the action plan ends, the legacy of transparency and social participation continues.”
Learn more about this commitment from Guilherme Fortuna and Renato Morgado.