From a Culture of Secrecy to Transparency: Effects of Access to Information Policy in Brazilian Federal Environmental Agencies
Abstract:
Studies on public transparency have expanded significantly, although the concept remains diffuse and predominantly normative. This research approaches transparency as a public policy, focusing on its effects on the bureaucratic culture of the state and on perceptions of interactions with society, particularly in terms of proximity and trust, understanding both as open systems that share information and public services. Methodologically, the study combines bibliometric analysis and content analysis of the literature (Web of Science, 2011–2026), complemented by citation networks and key references, with the aim of mapping trajectories, analytical approaches, and gaps in the field. The bibliometric results indicate a predominance of publications in English (94.72%), with a residual share in Spanish (3.81%) and Portuguese (1.46%) among the selected articles. There is a strong geographical concentration in Western countries, particularly the United States, the United Kingdom, Spain, and the Netherlands, which lead scientific production in the analyzed period.
In disciplinary terms, the literature is primarily concentrated in Public Administration (approximately 28%), followed by Computer Science and Information Systems (18%), Economics (12%), and Political Science (10%). In contrast, fields such as Cultural Studies and Behavioral Sciences have marginal participation (less than 5%), revealing an analytical imbalance that limits the understanding of subjective, cognitive, and organizational processes associated with transparency. As a contribution, the research proposes an analytical model to assess the culture of transparency, engaging with the typology of analytical focuses proposed by Albaladejo (2021) and the perspective of organizational transformation advanced by Vergara (2008). At the ad intra level, the model incorporates subdimensions related to organizational culture, such as the internalization of bureaucratic values and perceptions, as conditioning factors for embedding transparency into administrative routines. The model also engages with references from UNESCO and Brazil’s Office of the Comptroller General (CGU, 2011), and has been developed to enable longitudinal analysis of institutional transformations in Brazilian federal environmental agencies.
Keywords: transparency; public policy; transparency culture; public policy evaluation; state transformation.