Citizenship and Social Control:

the Ombudsman as an instrument of control and participation in public administration

Abstract

The Social Control of the activities of public administration, have been essential to ensure that their managers are responsive and provide for their decisions to pursue the public interest. The traditional mechanisms of control, well established among the three powers, have proved insufficient in the face of the multiplicities of the demands of society today. Emerge consequently strengthening instruments of control over the performance of public administration, exercised by the state apparatus and increasingly by the citizen. The objective was to understand the role of the Ombudsman as a vehicle for citizenship and control of financial administration. Accordingly, we sought to evaluate the participation of users of
processes and services of the Department of Finance of the State of Ceará (Sefaz), the main causes of the rise and fall of this participation as a function of the internal environment of Sefaz, and how the changes, interfered in the process of user
participation. It was adopted as a research method to document analysis, cross sectional descriptive and analytical approach supported by the reports generated by the treasury to the Ombudsman for the period January 2007 to December 2010. Diagnosed that users used queries, suggestions, complaints, compliments and complaints as a way to exert control and participation in financial administration thus exerting social control immediately and directly on the public administration. Social control is poorly exercised, the shapes are still precarious, a fact that sometimes favors the decision-making by minorities who do not always serve the public interest. There is no denying the evidence of the democratic potential of the Ombudsman as an instrument of control of public administration, both by the State as the citizen, that although in embryonic form, uneven and has participated sought the little space left for him to interfere positively to the
achievement of transparency democratic.