Wait No More: Citizens, Red Tape and Digital Government (Executive Summary)

This book is about the smallest unit of public policy: the government transaction. Government transactions—requesting a birth certificate, registering a property, or opening a business, for example—are the way that citizens and companies connect with the government. Efficient transactions enhance the business climate, citizen perception of government, and access to crucial public programs and services. In Latin America and the Caribbean, however, government transactions are often headaches. Public institutions rarely coordinate with each other, still rely on paper, and are more concerned about fulfilling bureaucratic requirements than meeting citizens’ needs. Wait No More empirically confirms a reality known anecdotally but previously unquantified and offers a path to escape the bureaucratic maze.