Wait No More: Citizens, Red Tape, and Digital Government: Caribbean Edition

Technology, Identification, and Access to Social Programs: Experimental Evidence from Panama

“…Consistent with cross-country evidence linking ID ownership to access to government benefits (World Bank, 2019), our results provide, to our knowledge, the first causal evidence showing that policies to expand ID ownership can have consequences for the progressiveness of government spending. 3 Second, this paper contributes to the discussion on the benefits and perils of using technology to improve access to identification (Clark and Gelb, 2018;Gelb and Metz, 2018) and, more broadly, to the provision of public goods and government services (Lindgren et al, 2019;Roseth et al, 2018). We show that using existing technologies to send important information to citizens can be a powerful tool to induce timely ID renewals, but that relying on an online renewal process can be detrimental when individuals struggle in using the new technology.…”

Default options: a powerful behavioral tool to increase COVID-19 contact tracing app acceptance in Latin America?

“…Latin America and the Caribbean present a particularly challenging setting for the uptake of contact tracing apps with exposure notifications. Citizens have low levels of trust in government (important because apps are provided by public institutions), low trust in fellow citizens (important given that most apps require the infected person to change their own status within the application; so if citizens do not trust others to take that step, then they have less reason to download and use the app), and high degrees of concern regarding data privacy (Roseth et al, 2018). Furthermore, most countries have weak data protection frameworks, and low-income individuals might also be concerned about overloading their data plans (Roseth & Porrúa, 2021).…”

The Importance of Clarity: Impacts of Colombia’s "Lenguaje Claro" Program on Reducing Administrative Burdens

“…The paper contributes to the literature on transactional public services and administrative burdens, which is particularly relevant in Latin America. Roseth, Reyes, and Santiso (2018) found that Latin American citizens face these burdens, resulting in many hours and much energy spent completing transactions. On average, Latin American citizens spent more than five hours accessing a public service, and nearly half of all government transactions required more than one visit to a public office to be completed.…”

“…In addition, the costs of government transactions hit lower-income individuals harder, and thus difficult transactions have a regressive effect. As Roseth et al (2018) stated, lower-income individuals generally enjoy less flexibility at work, which makes it difficult for them to take the time off to carry out a government transaction. In addition, they are less able to forego lost income and have less resources to cover the monetary costs necessary to carry out a transaction (e.g., transportation, photocopies, and fees).…”

“…Similarly, the learning costs resulting from complex information about transaction requirements and specifications, including forms that are difficult to fill out or that are presented in a language hard to understand, are factors that also affect, to a greater extent, people with lower educational attainment and who lack the necessary tools to navigate the system. Roseth et al (2018) found empirical evidence that administrative burdens negatively affect less educated citizens' likelihood of completing transactions to obtain public services. They found that citizens with less education complete fewer government transactions.…”