Article | Transparency, democracy and data protection | Asymmetries and Power

Interactions and relations between the Brazilian General Data Protection Law and the Brazilian Freedom of Information Act

In this article, published in the technical notebooks of the Comptage General of the Union (CGU), Bruno Bioni, Paula Guedes and Pedro Martins seek to demystify the interpretation that the Brazilian General Data Protection Law and the Brazilian Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) are conflicting. The starting hypothesis is that the true relationship between FOIA  and Brazilian General Data Protection Law is convergence,  whereas both are guided by the reduction of information asymmetries of the vulnerable party, the citizen. For this, the focus of the article is the analysis of the right of access in both legislations, bringing its peculiarities and relationship with the principles of protection of personal data. It is concluded that data governance is an increasingly important element for the materialization of the principles of efficiency and transparency in public administration, in order to emphasize the convergence between FOIA and Brazilian General Data Protection Law.