Open Brazil The World Bank Group’s new interactive monitoring, accountability and engagement tool for Brazil By Claudia Tufani and Marek Hanusch Summary transparency. Notably in Brazil, the public sector has solid record on transparency mechanisms, Open Brazil is an interactive and user-friendly and institutions are committed to fostering open online platform that provides information about government policies. By law, all states as well as the current Country Partnership Framework the federal government are required to have (CPF) for Brazil. Open Brazil is intended to make “transparency platforms” where data on budget the work of the World Bank Group (WBG) more and on the execution of expenditures is displayed accessible—or open—to an external and internal and accessible to the general public. audience, providing intuitive insights into the rationale and logic of WBG activities as well as The Office of the Controller General (CGU) regular (and where possible real-time) oversees the transparency policies at the federal monitoring of results achieved on the ground. level and is responsible for analyzing (and often Open Brazil leverages new technologies making it available) any data requests for including Big Data, Open Data, remote sensing information that is not already public. In 2016 the (e.g. satellite images), social media, and smart Brazilian government announced its commitment supervision tools. to open data policies (Decree 8.777/2016), which followed best international practices available. In The platform also includes an innovative this context, it became important for the WBG in dashboard that can be used to track the impact of Brazil to have its own transparency platform. A COVID-19 on specific sectors of the economy. tool like Open Brazil allows the WBG to better As the COVID-19 pandemic fundamentally align its transparency policies with those of the altered the development challenge in early 2020, government. the platform was expanded to include a COVID- 19 response section, which includes not only a Second, the WBG needs to be able to actively dashboard with real-time, automatically updating engage on its work with the public. While the indicators, but also an interactive story map, and external page of the WBG displays information displays all specific WBG operations related to for all projects, it does not allow to take into COVID-19. account the context and idiosyncrasies of the WBG’s engagement in every individual country. Challenges Open Brazil is thus highly customized to Brazil, Communication is an important part of explaining the context of the engagement and engagement with clients. Information on what the how the WBG specifically addresses Brazil’s WBG does and what development results are idiosyncratic development challenges, together achieved is critical. with the government and other stakeholders. WBG task team leaders working on Brazil can A next-generation tool like Open Brazil was use this tool to show how their projects fit into the needed for three reasons. First, it is important for bigger picture and what results they achieve. the WBG to keep track with innovation in the public sector more generally as relates to 1 Thirdly, Brazil’s country team also identified a social media about the WBG’s work in Brazil, need for an interactive tool to facilitate the and relevant aggregated demographic execution of key tasks. For example, preparing information of users who participate in the for official travel or being able to collect quick debate, with data drawn from the TalkWalker and reliable information before meeting with a tool. client are time consuming activities that could be Figure 1: Open Brazil landing page performed in a shorter time. It would be important for staff to be able to access the WBG’s portfolio footprint in the country as well as have access to specific indicators at the subnational level via a simple and accessible tool. Thus, an online platform that could provide interactive monitoring of current projects and real time data for subnational governments was identified as an important element to facilitate and expedite important activities carried out by WBG staff working in Brazil. Innovation The solution to address the challenges described above was to elaborate a platform, Open Brazil, that was user-friendly and accessible to the general public and that could also be used by WBG staff working in Brazil to facilitate the execution of key activities related to WBG’s engagement in the country. The platform is structured around five sections, which are displayed in the navigation menu bar: 1) Strategy; 2) Activities, 3) Impact, 4) Outreach, and 5) Benchmarking (Figure 1). The first three sections are the core of the site and are Story telling interconnected. Strategy is related to the framework constructed in the 2018-2023 CPF Among the innovative features that the platform that guides the program in the country. The has, Story Maps deserve special attention (Figure Activities section displays a portfolio footprint, 2). A Story Map is an interactive tool that allows projects, and research reports. Finally, Impact a narrative to be illustrated by images, maps and shows the achieved development results, tracing other multimedia content. Open Brazil makes use the CPF’s results framework with regularly of such tool, to explain the current CPF and key updated (in some cases real-time) indicators. results achieved under it. Telling the story allows the user to interact with both the Country CPF for The last two sections are Outreach and Brazil and with key functionalities in the site, Benchmarking. In the benchmarking section, it is including the Indicators section, thus providing a possible to see how Brazil measures up with other guided tour across the functionalities of Open countries in areas such as human capital, Brazil, leveraging it to tell one consistent, economic development, institutions and updated, and interactive story of the WBG’s infrastructure and environment. The Outreach engagement in Brazil. section displays an overview of public debate on 2 Figure 2: Story Map – Telling the Story from the outset targeted specific agencies/departments with a focus on making data from these institutions available via APIs. Internal data include automatically drawn data from the WBG’s operation portal or manually input data. Icons of the shape of speedometers (Figure 4) indicate whether projects are on track assuming a linear development trajectory. Figure 4: Selected indicator from Open Brazil Interactive images are displayed as the story unfolds Impact A story map is also available for the COVID-19 speedometer dashboard, walking the uses through the monitoring dashboard using a framework developed in 2020 WBG assessment of the pandemic in Brazil. Baseline, progress, target Impact The 2018-23 CPF focused on impact in three areas: 1) Fiscal Consolidation and Government Effectiveness for Sustainable, Inclusive and Interactive map Efficient Service Delivery; 2) Private Sector Investment and Productive Growth; 3) Inclusive and Sustainable Development. Under Focus Area 3 there is extensive use of interactive maps that are built with high Impact in these areas is tracked through a results definition satellite imagery. For example, framework with quantitative indicators. These are indicator 15.1 (Number of institutions provided displayed under the Impact section of Open by Bank projects with capacity building support Brazil. The indicator pages display the baseline, to improve environmental management at the progress and target values for all the indicators landscape level) allows the user to explore that are part of the CPF as well as some that have satellite imagery taken in 2014 and 2020 to gain been added later, as preparations for a 2020 a better understanding of deforestation over time Program Learning Review advance (in total, by simply dragging the swipe icon back and forth there are 54 indicators being displayed). across the screen. It is also possible to zoom in or out of an area depending on the level of interest The indicator section includes dynamic data from (see Figure 3). internal and external sources. For example, under Focus Area 2, indicator 9 and indicator 10.1 are Indicators under Focus Area 3 also take both updated automatically via an Application advantage of the Brazilian governments Programming Interface (API) that connects Open initiatives with open data and interactive Brazil with different databases. Indicator 10.1 monitoring tools. As mentioned earlier, Brazil draws data from the Brazilian Open Data System has been committed with transparency and available from the Brazilian Central Bank. This accountability platforms, and there is wide range Open Data System is a direct result of the national of tools available to track and monitor data. For policy for Open Data (Decree 8.777/2016), which 3 example, the National Water Agency makes that can be displayed in the map. The page is available georeferenced data on a variety of interactive so users can select the information topics related to the water and sanitation sectors. they want displayed in the map. Open Brazil uses the information available to When users select a specific state, the projects highlight the relevance of the indicators that are that are related to that state under the current CPF part of the CPF. In particular, the maps from the are also displayed (both active and closed National Water Agency, available under Focus projects) on the right side of the page. In addition, Area 3, provide users with the opportunity to the information of the indicators’ dataset for the understand the broader context of water selected state is also summarized below the list of sanitation issues and overlay different projects for the selected state. Projects are information of the same geographic area. Since available for the World Bank and Multilateral these maps are embedded in Open Brazil, they are Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA) as well as updated concomitantly with the maps shown in the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the National Water Agency page. jointly comprising the WBG. Portfolio mapping Figure 5: Smart Supervision App – Rio Grande do Norte Project Figure 4: Portfolio Footprint section expanded State-level poverty rates and project / disbursement information Images from project The Portfolio Footprint sub-section, under sites and sub- Activities, is another important innovation that project information makes the platform relevant and both externally and internally. The Portfolio Footprint page is Finally, as a pilot initiative, the Portfolio rich in data and helps users gain a better Footprint section also includes the Project understanding of WBG portfolio in Brazil as well Monitoring page. The page provides real-time, as gather specific information about states, and on-the ground project monitoring for selected probe the extent to which projects target projects, which makes use of the Smart development challenges at the state level. Supervision App, another WBG innovation. The The Portfolio Footprint page displays committed user can click on a project name which will zoom loans to each state under the current CPF by focus the map over to that location (see Figure 5). The area. In addition, it also displays an indicators pop-up provides information on the project, its dataset, which provides state-level data on value, approved date, end date, and beneficiaries, socioeconomic indicators, climate, disasters, and as well as all active sub-projects. Photos from deforestation or real-time wildfires. For example, project sites uploaded by project staff can also be Figure 4 displays poverty rate at the state level. accessed, providing more flavor of the work on This information is overlaid with state’s loans the ground. Through the Smart Supervision App, from the Bank. In total, there are 34 indicators the WBG is also able to communicate with project beneficiaries via mobile phones. Further 4 projects will be added as the Smart Supervision Figure 7: Evidence in Open Brazil App is rolled out. Benchmarking A good complement for the indicators in the portfolio footprint section is the benchmarking page. Here users will be able to benchmark Brazil on a number of socioeconomic, environmental and institutional indicators to other countries or country groupings (Figure 6). Figure 6: Benchmarking Brazil to countries and country groupings Public sentiment Any policy work requires to remain in touch with sentiment on policy issues in-country. For this Benchmarking to reason, Open Brazil includes an online media customizable snapshot under Open Brazil’s Outreach section comparators, using (Figure 8). This section draws on public social latest data media discussions and other online data, to Learning and evidence provide information on the online debate in areas where the WBG is active under the 2018-23 CPF, As a global development institution, drawing such as fiscal policy or the business environment. lessons from across the world is critical, as is Using the Talk Walker tool, information on key disseminating them across countries. To this end, terms of the debate, the location and intensity of Open Brazil includes a section on lessons on its the debate, and on aggregated demographic Evidence page under the Impact section (Figure insights are displayed. As a pilot social media is 7). This includes impact evaluations conducted also used under the Indicators section (Figure 9) on Brazilian development projects, by the WBG to track the WBG’s impact on the public debate and other institutions. To bring global experience through its analytical engagement. from the world, Open Brazil entered into a partnership with the NGO AidGrade, which Figure 8: Online media snapshot conducts meta-analyses of impact evaluations of development initiatives globally. A partnership with the Global Delivery Initiative, on the other hand, provides insights on common project implementation issues, drawn from thousands of development projects across the world, which can help development practitioners improve the quality of their projects during preparation and implementation. 5 Figure 9: Using social media to track impact of 3) supporting firms and jobs; 4) strengthening the WBG research and advocacy fiscal situation of subnational governments; 5) avoiding financial sector instability; 6) enhance natural resource protection; and 7) strengthen public sector management (Figures 10a and 10b). Figure 10a: Dashboard – Contain the Damage Section COVID-19 Dashboard As the COVID-19 pandemic spread, Open Brazil was expanded to include a section on COVID-19 response, which features: 1) a dashboard that Figure 10b: Dashboard – Avoid Financial tracks real time data to help track the depth of the Sector Instability and Support Credit Provision Section crisis and the speed and shape of the recovery, 2) a Story Map putting these indicators into context through the framework developed in the WBG’s 2020 assessment of the pandemic in Brazil, and 3) a page that tracks WBG’s portfolio in response to the crisis – which includes new projects (in the public and private sector) as well as re-structuring operations. The dashboard makes extensive use of APIs available from different institutions of the Brazilian government, such as the Central Bank, the Institute for Applied Economic Research (IPEA), and the National Statistics Office (IBGE). The dashboard also features a partnership between the World Bank and CIELO, a credit Next steps card company. The data provided by CIELO Open Brazil is going live in September 2021. allows an in depth understanding of how business Data analytics will be conducted to understand across the different sectors of the economy are how it is being used by the public and internally. impacted by the crisis. The data is summarized in This will inform any further development. CIELO’s sales index (ICVA – Índice Cielo de Varejo Ampliado). Google mobility and pollution About the authors data are used to nowcast industrial production. Claudia Tufani (ctufani@worldbank.org) is a Guided by the WBG’s assessment of the consultant for the WBG’s Brazil Country pandemic in Brazil, the dashboard is organized Management Unit around the following themes: 1) contain the damage; 2) protect the poor and most vulnerable; Marek Hanusch is Senior Economist for Brazil 6