Toward the Open Government Ecosystem: Connecting e-Participation Models and Open Government to Analyze Public Policies

This chapter presents the results of the analysis of the open government initiative in the city of São Paulo. The theoretical-methodological structure built in the doctoral research promoted the evolution of the debate about openness through the debate of the ecosystem of open government with several actors. We combine the theoretical discussion of e-participation and model in three-dimensional layers to address the political program, project management, and sociotechnical tools that make up the open government ecosystem. In addition, the results indicate the need for the evolution of open government strategies to an ecosystem capable of integrating several parties in the development of public policies; for this, it is necessary to invest in “collaborative data” between society, private organizations, and the government sector. We analyzed the limits and potentialities of municipal government openness in the city of São Paulo, in the management of Fernando Haddad, examining the “Programa de Metas 2013–2016,” “Plataforma do Planeja Sampa,” and “São Paulo Aberta.” The results indicate how initiatives vary in relation to the implementation of strategies, management of strategies, and their capacity to influence as policies. The opening strategy is promising only as the first steps of the policy cycle-formulation, agenda, and decision-making. For this chapter, we present the need to refine and re-elaborate the concept of open government from the ecosystem.