Governo Móvel no Brasil: Uma análise do estado da arte no desenvolvimento de aplicativos móveis por instituições do setor público brasileiro

Abstract

This thesis aims to examine and define the state of development of mobile applications offered by Brazilian public agencies at the federal level, which includes institutions of three powers (Executive, Legislative and Judiciary) and autonomous agencies such as the Public Prosecutors Offices and the “Tribunal de Contas da União” (Federal Audit Court). In addition, the study seeks to analyze users' perceptions of the initiatives mapped and understand how the relationship between the multiple actors involved in the process of designing, developing and evaluating government mobile applications. From a theoretical point of view, the two initial chapters of the thesis focus on the following objectives: (a) to debate how the concept of Digital Government is characterized by multiple dimensions aiming to understand how these aspects manifest themselves empirically in the way public sector institutions have adopted digital technologies to improve the functioning of the State or to mediate its relationship with society; and (b) to define mobile applications like a digital communication resource with particular characteristics that transform the experiences and designs of Digital Government initiatives and, more specifically, Mobile Government. The sample of this research is composed of 203 applications mapped from the developer page of 43 public agencies in Google Play. The initiatives were categorized by technical, communication, and organizational aspects. With regard to the perception of users, we adopted a strategy of modeling topics seeking to assess which topics were addressed and what was the opinion of users of mobile applications developed by the Brazilian public sector. The research also focuses on a series of semi-structured interviews with the objective of understanding the relationship between multiple actors (developers, project coordinators, public managers and software development companies) in the process of conception, development, and updating of mobile applications offered by Brazilian public sector agencies. Among the results of the research, we note that: a) public companies are responsible for a significant part of government mobile applications with particular emphasis on Embrapa, Datasus, and Serpro; b) registration, i.e. the creation of login and password, are one of the main problems faced by users of government mobile applications. On the other hand, among the users who positively evaluate the applications, themes such as practicality, usefulness and ease of use of the tools stand out; c) there are different models of mobile application development by Brazilian public sector organizations, the main ones being: i) development by internal sector, ii) development by outsourcing, iii) development by a public company and iv) development by contests, each one with advantages and disadvantages.