Como o apagão de dados sobre a COVID-19 desmontou a publicidade e transparência na administração pública

Resumo

Is it possible that, in the midst of the digital era, the democratically elected government of a country that has a Congress and a Judiciary established in accordance with the National Constitution ignore, deny, hide and erase public information about the health of its population ? The Covid 19 pandemic proved that yes: the Public Administration can defy the constitutional principles of publicity and transparency without practically any burden being officially charged to it. The present text proves these statements based on facts that occurred between 2020 and 2022 in Brazil, when the central Executive Power intentionally acted in this way in relation to a disease that killed thousands of Brazilians, despite contrary reactions by the Legislative and Judiciary Powers. . At that moment, while the Powers measured forces, the immediate “solution” found by society in the face of the dilemma of the official data blackout was the formation of a consortium of press vehicles, which started to count and publish daily the advance of contaminations, deaths and, later, vaccinations throughout the country. The press reaction, however, was only possible because Brazil is a federation, where the various states and municipalities maintain certain administrative autonomy but interact, for example, through the Unified Health System (SUS), and can have isolated vaccination initiatives (as occurred on the part of the then governor of São Paulo, João Dória) and carry out data collection. But the press consortium, which took advantage of the capitalized information produced by the states and municipalities, is far from being considered the ideal solution for such a serious issue. Although called “the fourth Estate”, the press does not have the ability to take the place of the State. Once the acute phase of the disease was over, we realized that, with the initial problem of lack of information being resolved at the time, today little is said about this open wound in the responsibility of the Central Power and its consequences. It is in this context that the present work intends to make a contribution.

Ficha do documento

Tipo

Dissertação

Ano

2023

Instituição

Fundação Getulio Vargas

Fonte

Repositório da FGV

Idioma

Português

Acesso

Acesso aberto

Identificador

oai:repositorio.fgv.br:10438/35166

Temas

Administração PúblicaTecnologiaDadosGovernançaSaúde

Palavras-chave

COVID-19Saúde públicaTransparênciaPublicidadeMinistério da SaúdeConstituição FederalPoderes da RepúblicaEpidemicPublic healthTransparencyPublicityMinistry of HealthFederal ConstitutionPowers of the RepublicAccountabilityAdministração públicaCOVID-19 Pandemia, 2020-Saúde pública - BrasilTransparência na administração pública