Public Transparency on Mobile Devices: An Evaluation of Brazilian Capital Transparency Portals Based on Heuristics

In Brazil, the issue of public transparency is quite complex. Despite some progress made in recent times, it remains far from the reach of the general population, especially when it comes to education, development, and access to information. Even though research has been conducted internationally on this topic, it has mostly focused on evaluating the transparency profile of national, subnational, and local governments. Such studies have either assessed passive and active transparency in these spheres of power or sought to understand how open data is made available, but they have largely ignored other important aspects such as access to data, dissemination methods, usability, and design issues. These aspects have traditionally been the subject of studies in the field of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). This research aims to evaluate public transparency websites in Brazilian capitals, focusing on their responsiveness, accessibility, and other pressing issues related to the interaction with users. The evaluation was conducted on mobile devices, using mobile heuristics. The goal was to assess the compliance of these websites with legal requirements and to identify ways to improve their relationship with society. The research employed a deductive method and had exploratory characteristics. The outcomes indicate that some of the websites analyzed need improvements or even total reconstruction, while others have advanced levels of responsiveness. The lack of responsiveness of some websites to mobile devices is found to be a major obstacle in popularizing access to public transparency, as it limits the search for more detailed information on desktop devices and creates barriers for those who have restricted access to other devices.