The project implemented by INDECOPI is an innovation because it aims to minimize biases civil servants can have about their peers. Likewise, this project nudge institutions to voluntarily remove regulatory barriers to competition. In the context of an economic recovery, we employ behavioral economics tools and data science to accomplish objectives more efficiently and effectively.

Through behavioral insights, we nudge civil servants to change their behavior, and as result, we remove bureaucratic barriers and create better conditions for the market. In this context, the project designed and sent documents with a new design that include messages of social norms. Through data science, we recollect evidence about the behavior of other entities, and we found the perfect comparison for every government institution. We design dashboards to monitor the voluntary removal and evaluate the effect of comparing an institution with others with better performance and close geographically.

The project ended in December 2022. In that understanding, INDECOPI through the technical secretariat for the elimination of bureaucratic barriers will keep promoting the voluntary removal of regulatory barriers to competition.

The maturity achieved shows us a good reception and legitimacy when contacting entities and their officials, therefore we will disseminate the practice with other areas of INDECOPI for its application and institutionalization of the project. We will continue to train officials in the promotion of voluntary elimination.

The project involved the participation of two allied teams:

• Innovation Team: In charge of the design of the document based on the bias identified, and the design of the follow-up tools such as dashboards.
• Research Team: In charge of implementing the project, based on the tools designed. They also coordinate with the institution for the voluntary removal of bureaucratic barriers.
  The coordination between these two teams has been crucial to control and monitor the project.

The beneficiaries of this practice are companies, university students, members of professional associations, and the general public since regulatory barriers can affect all of them.

For instance, companies might encounter barriers to accessing or remaining in the market. College students assumed onerous procedures for graduation and degree completion. Members of professional associations had to compile open-access documentation for professional practice in the labor market.

To measure the results we use Propensity Score Matching, and the results showed that this project caused a reduction in the average time to remove bureaucratic barriers to 28 working days. State entities that received the newly designed document and received personalized assistance by INDECOPI during the process of voluntary removal of bureaucratic barriers managed to reduce the removal time by 71% compared to those state entities that received a former standard document.

During the intervention, 1084 bureaucratic barriers were eliminated thanks to the management of 34 state entities. These results deliver a major impact to encourage other state entities that carry out supervisory activities to use data science tools and others such as behavioral economics to reduce costs and strengthen their labor.

Challenges:

• Ensure the understanding of the new design of documents by work team members.
• Difficulty in establishing communication with civil servants of the different state entities under legal research.
• High staff turnover slows coordination and management to achieve barrier elimination.

Failure:

• Failed agreements due to loss of coordination with civil servants designated by the entity for diverse circumstances such as a reluctant mindset or staff turnover that results in time spent on standardized meetings and calls being wasted.

The main conditions for success are:

• The level of trust the authorities that drive the resources can have in the project.
• The initial coordination of managers and workers in the use of the necessary physical and computer tools.
• Constant communication and expertise in the use of work resources and information gathering.
• Migration from the traditional model to a more intelligent one, in which those involved use data dashboards and goals in the economic sectors in which they work and guide.
• Persevering guidance and follow-up in stages between area leaders and workers.
• The constant guidance of the updated regulations of the government and its public policies.
• Detailed monitoring of short-term productivity that allows for feedback and the correction of errors on the fly.
• The level of commitment between civil servants of the government institutions and INDECOPI for a responsible collaboration.

Government institutions have similar problems at different levels with common solutions. The level of replicability of this project is very high in the areas of oversight and others related to cooperation across different institutions in a country.

In this project, we use behavioral tools to nudge civil servants to adapt their behavior towards high-quality regulation. In other words, the main idea of the project is to focus on assertive communication and promote cooperation between different institutions at different levels of a country.

Through a new form of communication using official documents, we achieve the voluntary removal of regulatory barriers to competition. Other institutions can use these tools to nudge other behaviors. The results show that the use of behavioral insights and data science would contribute to the work of other institutions that need a cooperative relationship to achieve results.

The experience with the voluntary bureaucratic barrier removal program can be summarized as follows:

• Understand the public servant's behavior and biases.
• Assimilate that the supervisor's function is not only to verify the result but also to get involved with the supervisee's work for a win-win relationship.
• Constant updating and training allow for the strengthening of the project.
• Innovative performance motivates the creativity of the work team.
• The distribution of tasks based on real-time information accomplishes more efficient achievements.

It is important to mention that we implemented data dashboards for the effective monitoring of the implementation and the correct use of the new document design. This shows us in real-time the status of the cases treated and the advance of the voluntary removal of regulatory competitions across the country. The dashboard is fed with information recorded in the research monitoring matrix.

Besides, we used rankings that are published by INDECOPI to reinforce the idea of comparison and promote fair competition between government institutions related to this matter.