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News from the Field: Online monitoring of Brazilian representatives

Transparência Brazil has received a grant from the Democracy Fund to implement the project “Monitoring Brazilian Legislative Houses and Representatives”. The organization which promotes access to information for the Brazilian people has been very successful with its innovative initiative to create and maintain an online database with details about Brazilian representatives. “The Project was born from the identification of a gap in the press coverage of elections”, explains Claudio Weber Abramo, Executive Director of Transparência Brazil. The online database which channels publicly available information can be used as a monitoring tool of the Federal and States Legislatures and the positioning of their Members. It offers the media, interested public and voters a follow-up mechanism on the way their elected representatives act, compiling data about votes, presence and interventions in Parliamentary Committees, expenditures and other legislative activities. The database does not contain opinions or comments to the data, allowing the reader to form an independent judgment. The Brazilian press extensively used the information provided in Excelências and the project has been awarded the prestigious Esso Prize in Journalism.

The project’s database has been widely quoted or referenced by media, websites, blogs and fora; on the Election Day in October 2006 more than 60 million hits have been recorded. The Project completed the information for the members of the Federal Houses and the representatives of the São Paulo State Legislature. Upon completion of the project Transparência will be collecting, aggregating and comparing objective data from the various Parliaments to present a fuller picture of the representatives. Within the next months all the remaining States will be included in the online portal. The second phase of the project consists in following up on selected political debates, to allow visitors of the website an evaluation of the legislative process and its results.

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