São Paulo, BrazilUse Readable text for larger type, or zoom in on the pages.
Red Tape Council
A permit should not become a second job
Dear members,
This month, our work has kept returning to a simple question: how much time and uncertainty should a small business have to absorb just to receive an answer from a public office? A permit is not a side issue for the person waiting on it. It can determine whether a business can open, hire, serve customers or keep paying its bills.
On 5 August, the Red Tape Council issued an open letter to licensing boards on deadlines that treat silence as consent, RC/RT/2026/23. The letter asks boards to set clear response periods and to explain what happens when the period expires. This is not a demand to approve every application automatically. It is a demand that an applicant not be left indefinitely in a queue without a decision, a reason or a next step.
On 10 August, the Secretariat marked six months of the Founders Assembly. On 13 August, the Assembly adopted the Platform Fairness Standard. Then, on 20 August, letters were sent to seven platform CEOs asking them to adopt it; delivery was recorded between 24 and 26 August. Those are developments in other councils, but they matter to us too. They show the stages of this process in public: evidence, a proposed standard, a vote, and a request addressed to people with the authority to act. On 25 August, consultation opened on the Cashflow Council’s draft. Our own work must meet the same test of clarity and follow-through.
The evidence we have
As of 27 August, the Red Tape Council has 97 members from 36 countries. We have received 221 reports from 44 countries. The median amount at stake in those reports is approximately US$4,240. Sixty-one reports were filed in the last 30 days.
Reports come from many places: the United States has 35, India 21, Brazil 18, the United Kingdom 11, Canada 10, Nigeria 9, and Argentina and Germany 7 each. The spread matters. A problem reported in many jurisdictions is not necessarily identical
everywhere, but it gives us reason to test whether a common administrative pattern is recurring.
The member profiles also remind us who is carrying this burden. Forty-two per cent of reporting members say they work alone; 37 per cent have teams of 2–9; 18 per cent have teams of 10–49; and 4 per cent have teams of 50–249. These rounded figures add to 101 per cent. They are rounded percentages, not a contradiction in the underlying count. For a person working alone, a request to visit several offices, repeat the same information or wait without a published timetable is time taken directly from running the business.
Across the Assembly, there are 1,410 members in 49 countries and 4,224 reports from 50 countries. The council totals are Platform 1,799; Cashflow 1,117; Fair Play 470; Trade 322; Red Tape 221; Resilience 174; and Team 121. These figures are a record of reports received, not a measure of the size of every problem or a claim that every report has already been independently resolved.
A story from the pattern
The permit pattern described here reflects the kinds of problems our evidence work is designed to examine:
A small operator submits an application and the documents requested. The office gives no clear service time. Later, the operator learns that a second approval is needed, but the first office has not said who is responsible for the hand-off. The applicant has to follow up repeatedly, while being unable to plan confidently around an opening date or a new hire. The problem is not simply that a permit takes time. It is that the process gives the applicant no reliable way to know what is happening, what is missing or when a decision will come.
That distinction is important. A faster process is valuable, but speed alone is not enough. A public service should say what is required, identify the responsible office, publish a realistic service time and provide a way to check progress. Where a decision is delayed, the
applicant should receive an explanation and a next step. Predictability is part of fairness.
What we are learning
Our campaign tools—the Days to Open index, covering 30 cities, and the Permit Timer—are intended to make delay visible in practical terms. A single report tells us what one member experienced. Repeated reports help us ask whether the same kinds of delay, unclear hand-offs or missing service commitments occur across places and types of permits. We should not confuse visibility with proof; we have to compare reports carefully and test the pattern before proposing a fix.
That approach is consistent with the wider evidence. The World Bank’s B-READY 2025 findings covered 101 economies and reported an average business-readiness score of about 60 per cent. Its public-services scores were about 23 per cent below its regulatory-framework scores.1 The gap is a useful reminder: a rule can be clear on paper while the service that puts it into practice remains difficult to navigate. Our job is to keep the focus on the experience of completing the process, not just the text of the requirement.
We also need to be precise about the proposed remedy. The Red Tape Council’s RT-001 asks for a small-business impact test for new rules affecting businesses, a one-stop digital process, published service times and a “silence is consent” deadline for permits. Each part addresses a different failure: considering small firms before rules are made; reducing needless repetition; making expected waits visible; and preventing applications from being left unanswered without limit. Any standard must be workable for public offices as well as understandable to applicants. We will keep examining that balance as the evidence develops.
What comes next
Our next work is to continue gathering and checking reports, strengthen the Days to Open and Permit Timer evidence, and clarify which recommendations can be measured in practice. Members will be informed when a defined step and schedule for the Red Tape proposal are ready.
There are important Assembly dates ahead. The Cashflow consultation closes on 24 September. Consultation on the Fair Play draft is scheduled to run from 13 October to 12 November. Wave 2 letters to proposed mid-sized platform CEO seats are scheduled for 17 November. These are not Red Tape deadlines, but they are reminders that evidence and consultation are continuing across the Assembly. We will keep members informed about the Red Tape Council’s own timetable as it is settled.
Thank you to every member who has taken time to file a report, answer a follow-up or help us compare experiences across jurisdictions. I especially want to thank Ana in São Paulo, Ravi in Bengaluru, Marta in Lisbon and Grace in Accra for their careful contributions to this month’s evidence discussions. Naming first names and cities is my way of recognizing that work without identifying anyone’s business. Thank you, too, to members who chose to remain entirely anonymous. Your evidence counts just as much.
We are asking for something practical: a process people can understand, a time they can plan around and an answer they can act on. That is a modest standard to state, and an important one to deliver.
With respect,
Edna AssunçãoChair, Red Tape CouncilSão Paulo, Brazil