Ministério Público Federal: defesa do patrimônio documental e garantia do acesso à informação no âmbito da construção de políticas públicas de arquivo

Abstract

This study aims to investigate the role played by the Public Ministry in the defense of documentary heritage and in guaranteeing the right of access to information and how this action can contribute to the construction of public archive policies. For this, the minutes of the meeting of the 1st Chamber - Social Rights and Inspection of Administrative Acts in General and of the 4th Chamber - Environment and Cultural Heritage of the Federal Public Ministry (MPF), in the period 2010-2019, were searched for procedures related to to the archival theme. The chambers act as reviewing bodies of decisions directed to extrajudicial instruments originated in the Attorney General's Offices distributed throughout the national territory. Within the scope of the 1st Chamber, the procedures identified were related to issues involving the right of access to information, while in the 4th Chamber with the preservation and conservation of archival heritage. The results showed us that in terms of partnerships with other bodies, the MPF worked with IPHAN and the National Archives to resolve some proceedings in the 4th Chamber, while in the 1st Chamber there was an exchange of remittances with the 5th Chamber - Combating Corruption and with the Federal Attorney for Citizens' Rights (PFDC). As for the origin of the procedures, there was a concentration in the southeastern region of the country in both chambers. As for the class of extrajudicial instruments, in the 1st Chamber there was a predominance of preparatory procedures and in the 4th Chamber of civil inquiries. Furthermore, it is noteworthy to note that most of the procedures identified in the 4th Chamber refer to the preservation and conservation of the railway documentary collection of the extinct RFFSA, a state-owned company responsible for managing the Brazilian rail network. Still within the scope of the 4th Chamber, we also verified the role of the media in covering some cases, mainly those related to auctions of historical collections. In the 1st Chamber, we highlight the National Transparency Ranking project, mentioned in a significant number of procedures and developed by the MPF itself to assess and improve compliance with transparency standards, especially the Access to Information Law, by states and municipalities. In this sense, we believe that the efforts undertaken by the project can be characterized as public policy initiatives, since the MPF operated in the sense of creating instruments of agglutination around structural objectives to defend the interests of the community. In addition, we conclude that the action of the MPF in the face of irregularities related to the archival theme occurs through an investigative, recommendatory and non- punitive bias, being resolved, to a large extent, still within the body's internal scope, which does not make it necessary to open proceedings before the Judiciary.