Transparency of information of federal universities: study of management reports in light of governance principles

This article is based on a doctoral research in Information Science which examines to what extent Management Reports of Federal Universities meet the governance principles established for the public sector, according to national and international guidelines. It is exploratory, descriptive, qualitative research whose interpretation of the data it is anchored on content analysis. It has as universe the 63 Brazilian federal universities, of which those that were ranked at the top of Ranking Webometrics, in each of the five geographic regions were selected. Results show that the five analyzed universities do not reach a high transparency level. Two universities ranked in the medium-high level and three in medium-low level. The compliance with principles of good governance on the Management Reports of these universities is still insufficient to achieve the highest level of transparency. The data show that to improve this profile to increase the active transparency under Brazilian law on access to information and the dissemination of information needs to be timely, with clarity and accuracy implanting good governance practices is necessary. Such initiative could mitigate informational asymmetry and democratize the relationship between State and citizens.