Desenvolvimento e validação de um instrumento para avaliação dos programas de integridade da administração pública federal brasileira

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to develop and validate, through the content validation technique, an instrument to assess the implementation of integrity programs in the Brazilian federal public administration. Considering the current context of corruption facing Brazil, it is essential to pursue public integrity, prioritizing society's interests over private interests, to avoid misconduct by public officials that corroborate corruption cases. The public administration, direct and indirect, must adopt instruments that ensure the proper management of public resources. Among them are integrity programs that must be implemented by federal public administration agencies and encompass actions to prevent, detect, punish, and remediate occurrences of corruption, aiming at good governance practices in the institutions. This study proposes constructing and validating an instrument to assess the program implementation through objective questions encompassing the four program axes established in Decree No. 9,203 of November 22, 2017: senior management involvement and support, integrity management unit, risk analysis, and continuous monitoring. The validated instrument subsidizes the calculation of indicators related to each axis and the index of integrity in public management, aggregating the information from each of the calculated hands. The criteria for calculating each indicator, prepared following the legislation in force and the manuals published by the Office of the Comptroller General (Controladoria-Geral da União - CGU), were sent for analysis by specialists who evaluated the content of each item and the attributes of the set of objects of the proposed instrument. With the questionnaire validated, based on the application of the methodology proposed in this study and its application through pilot testing, the indicators and the integrity index in public management were calculated, providing an opportunity for institutions and society to learn about the level of commitment to public integrity in each agency analyzed. The calculation of the indicators results in a number between 0 and 1, the closer to 1, the better. The index is composed of the sum of the score obtained for each indicator, weighted by the weight of each indicator. The interpretation of the index also occurs from results ranging from 0 to 1, where the closer to 1, the better, that is, the more integral is the analyzed institution. The data for the pilot test - calculation of the index and indicators - were collected through a questionnaire sent by the Electronic Citizen Information System (Sistema Eletrônico de Informações ao Cidadão - e-SIC) to federal universities in the state of Minas Gerais. This is mixed-methods methodological research (it uses elements from both qualitative and quantitative analysis). The results of the content validation stage demonstrated that 95% of the items proposed in the initial instrument should be maintained, despite occasional changes in the response alternatives and the weighting of the items initially proposed. The pilot test results showed that the participating institutions obtained better results in the indicators that address formal aspects of the program, a factor that may reveal the difficulty for institutions to implement the program. It should be emphasized that by proposing the use of the axes of the agenda for the creation of indicators, this study enables the analysis of each one in isolation, in addition to identifying the points that merit greater engagement of the organization for the effective implementation of the integrity plan, providing subsidies for decision-making and promoting social control.