Costa Rica tackles red tape by egov

An interesting article posted today in Tico Times sumarizes the Costa Rican government's project to apply technology to help improve the business environment. The policy is implemented by CINDE, a nongovernmental organization in charge of investment promotion, which relies primarily on introducing egov solutions. But, notes the article, "there is a huge gap in Costa Rica between the well-paved regulatory highway that CINDE and the government have set up for deep-pocketed foreign companies, and the pothole-filled obstacle course that ordinary Costa Ricans who just want to start up a mechanic's shop or a restaurant are forced to navigate... Costa Rica is drowning in red tape." The Doing Business index remains very low: Costa Rica ranks 121st of 183 countries. In Latin America and the Caribbean, Costa Rica ranks 25th out of 32 countries, behind every other Central American country except Honduras. Called the Digital Government project, the project is operationally a division of ICE, the country's power and telecommunications utility, but answers to a government commission presided over by the Prime Minister. It seeks to leverage the information technology expertise of ICE to put as many government processes online as possible. The basic building block, the "digital signature," is already developed. Tico Times also develops the recently introduced silence procedure: law 8,220, the Law (n°8220) for Protection of Citizens against Excessive Requirements and Administrative Processes introduces the concept of Positive Silence: that once all paperwork is presented, the government authorization requested will be deemed granted if the government institution does not respond within three days. Unfortutaly, Tico Times notes, this reform "has been a dead letter because ordinary citizens cannot drag a notary around to certify presentation of every paper required in bureaucratic processes." But if presentation is online, digitally documented by means of a digital cédula, the government authorization game could change radically in favor of ordinary citizens."
See also a presentation of the better regulation policy on the ministry's website and a news item on the National Plan for Simplification and Cutting Red Tape.