Letter to the World Bank B‑READY team offering the Days to Open survey

Letter — Circulated

To the World Bank B-READY team

Letter to the World Bank B-READY team offering the Days to Open survey

Dear B-READY team,

We write on behalf of the Red Tape Council of Reseated’s Founders Assembly to offer the Council’s Days to Open survey and associated anonymized evidence for your consideration. Our evidence concerns small businesses’ reported experiences with permits. It is a distinct, practitioner-sourced body of information that may be useful when examining how regulatory processes are experienced in practice.

We understand from the World Bank’s B-READY 2025 findings that the report covers 101 economies, that the average result is approximately 60 per cent “business ready,” and that public-services scores are approximately 23 per cent below regulatory-framework scores. We also understand that a full 164-economy edition is due by the end of 2026.¹ These findings make the practical delivery of public services a timely subject for further evidence and discussion.

Who we are and our mandate

Reseated is a global assembly of small-business owners, organized in seven councils. It launched on 10 February 2026 and is a nonprofit. Its members may participate anonymously; no member’s business is named in this letter. The Red Tape Council examines administrative processes that affect small businesses and develops proposals through an evidence and consultation process.

The Council’s RT-001 agenda item concerns the burden and uncertainty associated with business-facing rules and permits. Its proposed direction is that new rules affecting businesses should be accompanied by a small-business impact test; that processes should be accessible through a one-stop digital process; that service times should be published; and that permit procedures should include a defined deadline after which silence has a stated consequence. The Council is examining these as possible practices, not describing a requirement already adopted by Reseated or by any government.

Reseated’s process is deliberately staged. Reports are reviewed against a five-part pattern test: Volume, Frequency, Consistency, Spread and Corroboration. Where a problem passes the test, a proposed response may be prepared for public consultation and then submitted to an Assembly ballot. A measure adopted by the Assembly is communicated to the officials or institutions able to consider it. The Days to Open survey is a campaign and evidence-gathering activity within that work; it does not itself establish a policy position on behalf of a government, the World Bank or any other institution.

Evidence snapshot on 13 May 2026

At the date of this letter, the Red Tape Council had 46 members from 25 countries and had received 66 reports from 24 countries. All 66 reports were classified as concerning permits. The median amount at stake reported in this Council’s evidence was approximately US$5,472. This is a median of reported amounts at stake, not an average, a measured public cost, or an estimate of the amount at stake for all small businesses.

Across Reseated as a whole, 650 members were seated in 49 countries, and 1,643 reports had been filed from 50 countries. Those organization-wide totals provide context for the Council’s evidence; they should not be combined with or treated as a denominator for estimating the prevalence of permit problems among businesses generally.

The countries with the highest numbers of Council reports were the United States, 14; India, 11; Brazil, 7; Canada, 4; the United Kingdom, 4; Argentina, 3; Germany, 3; and Nigeria, 3. These eight country counts total 49 reports. The remaining 17 reports came from other countries represented in the 24-country report total. The counts describe where submitted reports came from; they are not country rankings of regulatory performance and do not measure the incidence of permit delays in each country.

The reported team sizes of the businesses associated with the Council’s evidence were: “Just me,” 44 per cent; 2–9 people, 41 per cent; 10–49 people, 12 per cent; and 50–249 people, 3 per cent. These figures describe the team-size categories in the Council’s evidence snapshot.

The Council’s survey and reports record member-reported experiences. The figures describe reports received by the Council and are not statistically representative estimates of small businesses generally.

Policy context and limits of this offer

The policy context for this letter is the World Bank’s B-READY work and the findings cited above. The Council’s proposals remain within Reseated’s own process. This offer concerns the survey and the Council’s permit evidence for consideration in the team’s work.

The evidence raises questions for further investigation: what permit applicants understand about the expected steps; whether published service times are available to them; how they describe the time and money at stake; and whether a process gives them a clear way to obtain status information. We would welcome the team’s guidance on whether any of these questions are relevant to its work and on how the survey could be shared without confusing member-reported experience with comparable country-level indicators.

Requests

We respectfully ask the B-READY team to:

1. Consider the Days to Open survey instrument and a documented, anonymized extract of the Council’s permit evidence for preliminary review.

2. Advise whether the survey’s questions or the categories in the Council’s evidence could usefully inform the team’s consideration of public-service delivery, or whether the material is better treated as case evidence.

3. Indicate, where possible, which limitations are decisive, including the number of reports, the country coverage, the member-reported nature of the information, and its relevance to comparable country-level indicators. We would value a clear distinction between data that cannot be used and questions that might be improved in future collection.

4. Consider a short technical discussion with Council representatives about the survey’s collection process, definitions and limits before deciding whether to use any data.

Offer of anonymized data

We are prepared to provide an anonymized extract of the reports and the Days to Open survey material for review. Any proposed extract would omit members’ names and business names. We would provide a description of the fields, the date range covered, the categories used and the limitations that apply. We would not infer a business identity from a narrative or combine details in a way intended to identify an individual member.

We can also provide the aggregate figures in this letter: the Council’s membership and report totals, the country counts, the permit classification, the median amount at stake, the team-size distribution and the number of reports in the preceding 30 days.

An accompanying note would explain that the evidence is voluntary and member-reported and that the aggregate counts are not representative estimates.

Our interest is practical. A permit process can be difficult for a small business to plan around when the steps, expected service time or route for checking status are unclear. The reports give us a reason to examine those issues collectively, but they do not answer every question about causes or remedies. We hope a carefully bounded exchange of evidence can help identify what is measurable, what remains uncertain and what additional information would be needed.

Annex: Sources and records

1. World Bank, B-READY 2025 findings. The figures cited in this letter are the 101-economy coverage, approximately 60 per cent average “business ready” result, approximately 23 per cent lower public-services scores relative to regulatory-framework scores, and the stated end-2026 timing for the full 164-economy edition.
2. Reseated internal Red Tape Council evidence snapshot, dated 13 May 2026: 46 members from 25 countries; 66 reports from 24 countries; permit classification for 66 reports; median amount at stake of approximately US$5,472; country counts; team-size distribution; and 26 reports in the preceding 30 days.
3. Reseated internal organization-wide snapshot, dated 13 May 2026: 650 members in 49 countries and 1,643 reports from 50 countries.
4. RC/RT/2026/1, Call for evidence: Red Tape Council agenda item RT-001, 10 February 2026.
5. RC/RT/2026/20, Open letter to mayors and city executives: publish your permit times, 18 March 2026.
6. RC/RT/2026/S.1, evidence submission, 23 March 2026; and RC/RT/2026/S.2, evidence submission, 4 May 2026. These are internal records and are cited here only for the facts summarised in this letter.

Notes and sources

Sources

1. World Bank, B-READY 2025 report