All About Diário Oficial
The federal government and each state’s government have a special communication vehicle to inform the Brazilian population about laws, decrees and other subjects related to the public administration. In this article, we will learn more about Diário Oficial.
What is Diário Oficial?
Diário Oficial, which is Portuguese for Official Gazette, is the communication vehicle through which the Imprensa Nacional, Portuguese for National Press, publishes and renders every official document regarding legislation and public administration. Diário Oficial is circulated on weekdays.
There are three different kinds of Diário Official:
- Diário Oficial da União, which is the federal government’s Official Gazette, abbreviated as DOU
- Diário Oficial do Estado de São Paulo, which is the Official Gazette of the state of São Paulo, but there is also a Diário Oficial do Estado for each of the other 27 states of Brazil
- Diário Oficial da Cidade de Brasília which is the Official Gazette of the city of Brasília, but there is also a Diário Oficial da Cidade for each of the main cities in Brazil. In smaller cities, either the Diário Oficial is not issued on a daily basis, or there is no Diário Oficial. In which case the information relating to that city is published in another Diário Oficial
Diário Oficial can be obtained via a paid subscription from the Imprensa Nacional or free of charge via the Imprensa Nacional website. A list of all Diário Oficial editorial offices are available in this link.
It is also important to note that there is a fourth type of Diário Oficial, but it exclusively publishes decisions related to the Judiciary Power. It is called Diário da Justiça, there is one for each body of the Judiciary Power, and they are published online only.
History of Diário Oficial
Diário Oficial was first created when the Portuguese Court came to Brazil fleeing Napoleon’s troops that were overwhelming all other European countries. On the 10th of September 1808, the first official communication vehicle of the government was printed, named as Gazeta do Rio de Janeiro, since Rio de Janeiro was the capital city of Brazil at the time.
After several name changes, Diário Oficial was first printed on the 1st of October 1862, and has, since then been the only communication vehicle responsible for disclosing all information of general interest related to public administration, such as approved laws, decrees, announcements and other information related to company formation, for example. In 1994 the Imprensa Nacional started using the Internet as a way of publishing Diário Oficial.
How it is organized
The Diário Oficial is divided into three separate sections:
- Laws, decrees, resolutions, regulatory instructions, ordinances, minutes of the plenary and other legislative acts of general interest
- Acts in the interest of Federal Public Administration servers
- Contracts, announcements and other public notices
Each section has its own set of pages, so whenever a section finishes, the other section starts again from page 1. Also, at the start of each section there is a summary with all the public bodies.
Who writes on it
As Diário Oficial is composed entirely by official notices, its main contributors are the different bodies if the public administration, such as:
- Judiciary Power
- Presidency of the Republic
- All Ministries
- Legislative Power
- Other entities publishing announcements of public interest
How to find information in it
Finding the information you want in the Diário Oficial may prove to be a difficult task, as every section of it has an average of more than 160 pages, for example the third section of the edition from the 7th November 2014 was 288 pages. With this in mind, the Imprensa Nacional developed a tracking program called IN Busca Total, which allows the online reader to register a word in the service. Whenever this word appears in one of the Diário Oficial’s editions, the online reader is notified via e-mail. The IN Busca Total tracking program can be accessed through this link.
The Imprensa Nacional also has a search mechanism, available through this link, in which the reader can search for a word and can specify:
- In which Diário Oficial the word should be searched
- A start and end date for the search