<b>Information disclosure policy from public sector in the state of Minas Gerais</b> - doi: 10.4025/enfoque.v31i2.16079

Abstract

The entities that constitute the structure of Brazilian public administration are required by the Federal Constitution to give account about public resources use and to respect the publicity principle. In that sense, this study aims to examine the voluntary disclosure and mandatory policy which are adopted on the electronic pages of Minas Gerais State and Belo Horizonte municipality, in accordance with the perception of post-graduation students from courses in Accounting and Finance and External Audit from Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (UFMG). About the procedures, we chose to apply a questionnaire to 820 post-graduation students from Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais in September 2009 and that of the 820 e-mails sent, 217 returned, so they were excluded from the sample. Of the 603 remaining there was obtained a return 66 questionnaires, representing 10.95% of valid addresses and 8,04% of the delimited population (820 contacts). The used questionnaire consisted of four closed questions with dichotomous answers, a question containing information options, which could be found in the State websites and in their residence county, and three questions with a 4-point Likert scale. The results indicated that the most interest information by residents users in Belo Horizonte consisted in seeking legislation concerning the municipality and the State and information relating to works undertaken by public entities. It was also noted that the questionnaire respondents tended to agree that the released informations are insufficient to allow conclusions about the proper implementation of public resources in both the state and the county; and they tend to disagree regarding the state of Minas Gerais and the municipality of Belo Horizonte act in line with what society expects.