Autumn 2016 Issue
Stakeholders across El Salvador are collaborating to implement user-centric design on MiEmpresa.gob.sv
“We can improve infrastructure and services, generating a virtuous circle of economic growth, based on easier compliance with legal obligations.” Minister of Economy Tharsis Salomon Lopez, El Salvador
assigned a team of 25 municipal employees to publishing and simplifying procedures, and attending inquiries.”
just creation, but also operation and closure, to get the results we want: greater compliance, tax payments, and dynamic economic growth.”
An elegant website isn’t enough, governments must consider the full life cycle of a process from the user’s perspective. El Salvador built a single window, MiEmpresa.gob.sv, to allow simple online business registration, but informality remained a major problem, with over 60 percent of businesses noncompliant with relevant regulations.
WASHINGTON Develop a system that includes funds to maintain and improve online procedures. Washington, DC has had a business registrar for over 200 years and, in that time, accumulated a great complexity of legislation and regulations. According to Josef Gasimov, Deputy Corporate Registrar for the District of Columbia, “we had to step back and spend a few years documenting our processes, then working with our municipal government and the U.S. Congress, which approves the District’s budget, to simplify. There was no way to achieve our goals without detailed, hard work and extensive collaboration across District agencies, and with the federal government. We also reached out to business registrars in other states to learn from their experiences. Then we wanted to be sure we kept up with changing technologies, since a good online system today will appear outdated in two or three years. We built into our fee structure funds to maintain and upgrade our services over time. As a result, and with our staff’s assistance and involvement, my agency created the DC Business Center (business.dc.gov), which generates a user-specific checklist of licenses and other requirements to start over 133 types of businesses in the District. It also provides clear
While it was much easier to register a business, compliance with the law after registration, including tax payment, remained complex and cumbersome. El Salvador is piloting a project in Santa Ana, a municipality of 250,000, to simplify tax payments, put them online and educate users about the benefits and obligations of registering a business. According to the Minister of Economy Tharsis Salomon Lopez, “once we implement the new process successfully in Santa Ana, we can replicate it nationally, so we grow our tax base. With those revenues we can improve infrastructure and services, generating a virtuous circle of economic growth, based on easier compliance with legal obligations. We have to consider the entire life cycle of a business, not
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step-by-step processes and downloadable forms. In the near future, we aim to make the services provided by all District agencies that issue licenses, permits, or certifications, or perform inspections, transactional online through single windows. Customers will be able to scan and submit documents, receive approvals, and pay for services online. Using the online single windows will save customers’ time, while their digital submissions will simplify our record keeping and improve data accuracy. Our process of continuous improvement has generated over 14,000 new business entities registered in DC during fiscal year 2016 (e.g. October 1, 2015 - September 30, 2016). The average time to register a business has fallen to less than one hour, if the customer decides to expedite her registration, and we continue to improve.” IMPROVE FROM WITHIN All of these reformers improved their systems from within. They didn’t spend their scarce resources on hiring consultants to write papers about what they should change. Rather, they hired experts to help them improve specific processes, and they sought input from, and listened to, their users. They focused on usercentric design and continually expanded improvements to their systems, one transaction at a time. This is the way forward. It is a path that is open to all governments, at all levels. 169