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Brazilian Civil Society Organization´s Map
Brazilian Civil Society Organization´s Map

A. Problem Analysis

 1. What was the problem before the implementation of the initiative?
The political agenda of a new civil society organization’s regulatory framework was enforced by a great number of historical and large Brazilian Civil Society Organizations (CSO) (http://plataformaosc.org.br/plataforma/)during the 2010 presidential electoral contest. These large CSOs wrote to both of the main presidential candidates a public letter (http://plataformaosc.org.br/em-carta-aberta-plataforma-define-prioridades-e-proximas-acoes/) making their demands. The elected government approved as a result of this public debate the Brazilian New Civil Society Organizations Regulatory Framework (MROSC) (http://www.participa.br/osc#.WJ2ktVUrJxA), which had three priority objectives to be addressed: 1) legal and regulatory innovations for the existing relationships and existing contracts between the sector and the public administration; 2) economic sustainability; 3) standardization of CSO certification for tax exemptions. One of the outputs of the public debate between the Brazilian Presidency of the Republic Government Secretariat and the CSOs leaders on the necessary reforms regarding the partnerships held by the public administration – in all levels of the federation – and the CSO was the enactment of Law 13.019 in July 31, 2014 (http://www.participa.br/articles/public/0028/8040/Lei_13.019_-_INGL_S_-.pdf). In parallel with the law approval by the Parliament fallowed by the presidential sanction there was a great pressure on the elaboration of implementation, monitoring and evaluation, knowledge-based mechanisms that would support this national effort. However, there were until that moment no specific and user friendly transparency and accountability mechanisms for the population to access information on the partnerships and agreements held by the public administration with the CSOs in the delivery of fundamental public services: health, education, social assistance, services to the elders, aid to drug addicts, sports and culture services, etc. On the other hand there were neither trustful data gatherings nor massive and acknowledgeable public presentation on data related to the existence and existence of all Brazilian CSOs: its numbers, general characteristic, areas of expertise and of influence, demographic dispersion on the national territory, number of people employed, amount of money and wealth circulated from the public and the private sector to the CSOs, the CSO main projects, their history and its accumulated knowledge. In this scenario of growing demand, as well as with the gap of public information, transparency and with the ongoing need of public accountability that the “Brazilian Civil Society Organization’s Map” was officially born, in December 2014. In Brazil and in the world CSOs provide valuable public services to society. Through CSOs the population can organize and defend their rights, communities and interests. CSOs can fully exercise their collective potential, acting in partnership with the public administration to carry out public policies and/or develop their own projects, financed by the private financing or being self-sufficient. Public transparency and availability of quality data are prerequisites for understanding the strength and capacity of CSOs in Brazil. To understand the territorial dispersion of organizations, their areas of updating, projects in progress and their execution capacity, to facilitate and understand the financing conditions of CSOs, to make it visible and to make it more effective, transparent and strong. We believe that the "Civil Society Organizations Map" can provide the information and support needed to achieve these goals.

B. Strategic Approach

 2. What was the solution?
The solution was the creation of a new public transparency, accountability and access to information and knowledge open and free-access platform: the “Civil Society Organizations Map” (https://mapaosc.ipea.gov.br/). An open, free and public on-line portal that provides variety of information on the profile and performance of all the country’s 404.000 CSOs, the Map’s central mission is to provide data, knowledge and information on the role played by the far more than 400,000 CSOs exiting in Brazil and their cooperation with the public administration in the process of delivering public policies and services.
 3. How did the initiative solve the problem and improve people’s lives?
Below we describe how the “Civil Society Organizations Map” initiative solved the earlier problem presented in question 1: • The initiative aggregates concise, comprehensive and easy information on all existing Brazilian CSOs; • Data integration provides updated information to public managers on where and what CSOs are doing, mainly in partnership with government. • Provides aggregated data for the decision-making of political actors, as well as public and private investors; • • Streamlines and simplifies the communication and acquisition of information from and about organizations; • It provides a digital information space in which CSOs can complement data acquired from public and official sources; • It reports on all Brazilian CSOs to the world through a free public website; • It maintains an open and free technology information to enable transparency of the rendering of value-added services by intermediaries; • Source of innovation and sharing of best practices and technologies; • Incentive to partnerships and sustainability of projects with public interest, through the provision of a "Public Call for Financing Projects Central" in the portal “Home” page. Our public service contributed to enhance the well-being of people by offering to a diverse public of beneficiaries the following goods: Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) • It offers to CSOs, regardless of their size, means and opportunities to make their work and work free, public and known, demonstrating their public accountability in a transparent way. • It streamlines the relationship and communication between CSOs and different project funders (sources of funds), researchers and institutions that intermediate private donations (individual and institutionalized). • It allows CSOs to understand the work of other Brazilian organizations and to exchange information, experiences and good practices among themselves, facilitating the formation of networks. • To a large extent, the Map can potentially reduce the medium and long-term costs of resource mobilization by CSOs by providing information that will assist both CSOs and their institutional, private and/or individual funders and donors to identify projects of interest. Public and private project financiers • It satisfies in the first instance the search and selection of CSOs for project financing • It allows the mapping of CSOs with experience by area of activity, helping the project funder to find those organizations that meet the requirements of working in a specific community. • It allows funders to identify diverse CSOs for comparison purposes. Private individual and institutional donors • It supports the growth and public trust of private and institutional donation online and allows existing donation systems to strengthen; • It gives donors the tools to identify, compare and track the records of the activities carried out by the CSOs they wish to support. • It allows donors to have a mechanism to take responsibility for their donation, being able to verify the fundraising capacity of an organization and its correlated capacity of execution, while evaluating the impact of its work. Regulation and public control • Provides data and analysis tools to support public transparency; • It generates ever better information, data and reports to monitor the performance of the sector in national public life; • It supports the publication of objective data sent by the organizations themselves, saving the cost of control and diligence on the part of the public administration; • It establishes an electronic system that can replace inefficient systems - already existing or preventatively - as well as inhibits by public transparency and mutual agreement intrusive practices towards CSOs rights. Public Policy Managers • It allows public managers to identify territories that are over or under represented in terms of the availability and/or performance on the delivering of public services by CSOs; • It supports decision-making, allowing policymakers to track trends in CSOs funding and action by area and territory. Area Professionals • Generates information that will help accountants, lawyers, and consultants advise the organizations they serve. Researchers and scholars in the area • Generates key information for statistical purposes and analysis of government performance; • Offer data and information to support the work of researchers and academics, qualifying the process of analysis and production of knowledge regarding the CSOs sector.

C. Execution and Implementation

 4. In which ways is the initiative creative and innovative?
There is no completely free and unrestricted access platform like this in the world. This initiative is open sourced and can be shared with other governments or CSOs. Similar experiences are commercial or are not as broad as this: Guide Star International (EUA, India, Belgium, Israel and South Korea), Charity Navigator and Charity Commission (UK), for example. It is a completely new and open minded approach to the relationship between the public administration and the CSOs, based on the Open Data and Government philosophy, built in close partnership with CSOs. Some of the project’s innovative features: 1. The Civil Society Organizations geographical search Map; 2. CSOs Search toolbar; 3. Search engine for project’s funding calls: 4. Indicators and infographics; 5. Accessibility Menu (for people with disabilities); 6. Registering CSO Representatives section; 7. Comprehensive and User-friendly CSO Profile Page; 8. Daily Public Data Update; 9. Correction of the public resources transfered to CSOs by inflation indexes; 10. Tutorial for registration of representative of OSC and editing of profile page; 11. A complete portal FAQ; 12. Data Extractor; • The initiative will present new features in the future: Integration with other georeferenced databases and become a even more interactive platform.
 5. Who implemented the initiative and what is the size of the population affected by this initiative?
The beta version was first implemented in cooperation by the Brazilian think tank Getulio Vargas Foundation and the Brazilian Presidency of the Republic General Secretariat. After the project was officially launched at the end of 2014 the responsibility for further development and the ownership was fully transferred to the Brazilian Institute for Economic Applied Research (IPEA). Ipea is a federal government think tank. The Institute, nowadays part of the Planning and Budget Ministry, expanded the Map’s reaching from 40 thousand to all 400 thousands CSOs, and integrated new databases. Currently, we are devising ways to to connect this Map with informational data from state and local governments, since a large share of the OSCS activities occurs in partnerships with state and local government . As a national broad on-line platform the Brazilian Civil Society Organization’s Map benefitted direct or indirectly almost 404.000 organizations – with over 2.2 million employees -, as well as all the public servant in the federal, state and municipal level working in partnership with the CSO. As we mentioned before there are other beneficiaries such as the control agencies, academics and researches in related fields of study, journalists and public influencers, etc. Thus it is difficult to measure the precise number of people impacted by this initiative. There are many indirect beneficiaries of this project.
 6. How was the strategy implemented and what resources were mobilized?
Step 1: Built a complete database on the CSOs partnerships with the federal government; Step 2: Create an on-line beta version of an on-line and free public transparency platform; Step 3:Launch the beta version with the cooperation and support of many partners Step 4:Look forward for new approaches, such as states and municipalities data on CSOs Step 5: Always upgrade the initial and basic platform’s functionalities; Step 6: “Spread the word” to public and related events and common-interested partners. In financial terms the first Cooperation Agreement signed between IPEA and the Brazilian Presidency of the Republic, in December 2014, designated exactly R$ 700.000 (Brazilian Real), for the cost of the 2015-2016 period. Other agreements were settled with the Ministry of Justice, in 2016, for the amount of R$ 1.000.000, for the 2017-2018 period. And the reenactment of the Cooperation Agreement with the Presidency, with a new budget of R$ 700.000, in 2016, for the 2017-2018 period. One of the main philosophies of the initial project strategy was that it needed to gain autonomy and to be auto sufficient. To guarantee that core value all public data base was transferred, extracted and load to IPEA’s data bank via web service intelligence. In other words the on-line platform was the most updated as possible, with no human interference on having access to public and reliable data.
 7. Who were the stakeholders involved in the design of the initiative and in its implementation?
There were many stakeholders involved in the design of the initiative and until know many of them are still consulted in the ongoing development process. Core stakeholders: a) Brazilian Presidency of the Republic Government Secretariat (SEGOV/PR); b) Brazilian Institute of economic Applied Research (IPEA); c) CSOs Platform; d) Other governmental partners; e) Academics Three main institutions were directly involved in the project implementation: the Brazilian Presidency of the Republic Government Secretariat was coordinating the implementation, with the technical supervision and collaboration of the Getulio Vargas Foundation Project branch (FGV Projetos) was responsible for the initial beta version of the project in partnership with the Brazilian Institute for Applied Economic Research (IPEA), which is today coordinating and is responsible for the project’s improvement. The persons involved in the implementation process were: • Lais de Figueiredo Lopes (Former Brazilian Presidency of the Republic Special Advisor); • Félix Garcia López (project coordinator / IPEA). • CSOs representatives
 8. What were the most successful outputs and why was the initiative effective?
Five of the most remarkable outputs which illustrates the success of the initiative and its bonds to the SGDs were: 1) We have created a sound and broad platform on the CSOs sector in a national level, where there was no systematic information aimed for public transparency and accountability; 2) We have provided to the public administration an innovative tool for the addressment of better and new reliable public services in partnership with CSOs; 3) We have provided the means to protect and simultaneously empower the CSOs assuring and helping on its path of credibility while providing tools for its long-term sustainability, through legal and institutional reform; 4) We have managed to provide trustful data for the academic sector focused on the CSOs reality, while continuously delivering reports and publications for the society; 5) In resume, we have managed deliver an overall better institutional and legal environment focused on many of the 16th and 17th SDG’s targets, specifically related to civil society’s, CSOs, rights of association and their relation with the public administration. Together these actions contributed with the improvement of the institutional and technical environment for the Brazilian national-wide public administration and CSO relations agenda. It also left a better terrain for knowledge production and dissemination, stimulating an overarching research agenda for the academics. In terms of transparency and accountability it delivers an on-line always-updated public platform for any citizen or public representative to address the entire CSO’s universe and complex reality, while protection, informing and advocating for better and stronger civil society.
 9. What were the main obstacles encountered and how were they overcome?
The main obstacles and how they were overcome: 1) We have faced very rasp inter-sectorial and intergovernmental obstacles while dealing with a range variety of organizational cultures and multiple-type stakeholders – representatives from all levels of government (federal, state and municipal levels), from the CSOs and academics. To constantly maintain an open dialogue with all of those core stakeholders in every phase of the project’s path is an enduring task. 2) We have faced some difficulties on the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) aspects. We drafted from scratch the beta version of the platform, and it is an ongoing task to keep it updated in terms of data while developing new features and pushing the initiative forward. 3) Brazilian political instability may affect the mid-term financial sustainability of the project, because there is not yet a specific and constant public budget addressed to the project. However we are building many private and public partnerships to address long-term stability to the initiative. For now we have an expected R$1,700,000 budget for the 2017-2018 timeframe.

D. Impact and Sustainability

 10. What were the key benefits resulting from this initiative?
Before this project went alive there was neither confidence nor easy-friendly platform to access and research on any data related to the Brazilian CSOs national reality and characteristics. We believe one of the key benefits of the project was to deliver to the most varied types of stakeholders and to the Brazilian population an open, free, friendly-user transparency always updated on-line service on the entire Brazilian civil society organization’s reality and universe of partnership with many levels of the public administration. There is an obstacle related to the accessibility to internet in the country, being the most of it through mobile internet cellphone. Thus we are developing a mobile app extension for the platform broader reach. On the one hand, the impact on the entire CSO-public administration system is being progressively felt due to this project, because it became a mid-stone for the approach to civil society for the delivery of public services in many areas. On the other, CSOs can use the platform’s search engine to look for funds and financing for their projects guaranteeing a better and sustainable life-time to their actions and activities, as well as for their organizations. Academics can better address policy advise by using this initiative as a way more accountable and trustful data support on their analysis and diagnostic. The greater outcomes is to deliver reliable data for public purpose.
 11. Did the initiative improve integrity and/or accountability in public service? (If applicable)
Yes, with no doubt we could change the reality in terms of knowledge, transparency and accountability in public service delivered through CSOs in partnership with the public administration. As an on-line platform being automatically updated using a web service system which extract, transfer and load daily new data this initiative was able to create a better and mostly accountable environment for the sector. Using this platform a public servant can better decide whether to accept a project coming from a specific CSO, looking through his past activities, how their funds were acquired, accessing their history and accumulated knowhow, etc. Looking as a citizen the platform can serve as an easy-friendly mechanism for people to hold the government accountable on the delivery of public services by having access to all contracts between the CSO and the public administration, judging whether a project in his community were delivered as expected or not, whether the beneficiaries were in fact reached by the CSO’s actions or not, and if there is no complaining laying between the CSO and the use of public budget for that cause. We can track back to where there was no public and reliable data on CSOs for the Brazilian country. Furthermore, we have reports and record on every approach and advance of the innitiave: how many partners were addressed, which was there cooperation, how this can impact CSOs reality in terms of self-awareness and how this can be used by public servants for better policy delivery. Now one can easily access in one single place all the budget the public administration has or will transfer in partnership with the Brazilian CSOs, leaving a path of public transparency and accountability for all.
 12. Were special measures put in place to ensure that the initiative benefits women and girls and improves the situation of the poorest and most vulnerable? (If applicable)
No direct action was taken to address the rights of women and girls. However the new knowledge on the CSO’s reality provides us information related to the profile of the organization’s workforce, their director board composition, the beneficiary public and their gender distribution on the territory, as well as the amount money and quantity of actions taken by CSOs in partnership with the public administration enforcing the women’s and child’s rights and for the most vulnerable people. We came to offer a mean through which many stakeholders can take to action the initiatives necessary to improve the delivery of public oriented services. The Brazilian CSO’s organization has the following reality: the 20% biggest organizations concentrate almost 80% of all federal government cash transfer. In that sense it is crucial to better address the spread and rationality of those choices, reaching the most vulnerable populations.

Contact Information

Institution Name:   Brazilian Civil Society Organization´s Map
Institution Type:   Government Department  
Contact Person:   Félix López
Title:   Sr.  
Telephone/ Fax:   (55-21) 3515-8684 / (55-21) 3515-8437
Institution's / Project's Website:  
E-mail:   mapaosc@ipea.gov.br  
Address:   IPEA Diretoria de Estudos e Políticas sobre o Estado, as Instituições e a Democrcaicia - Av. Antônio Carlos, 51, 17º andar, Sala 1723 - Centro.
Postal Code:   20020-010
City:   Rio de Janeiro
State/Province:   Rio de Janeiro
Country:  

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