5 describes the data. Section 6 presents the experimental results. Section 7 discusses the results of the study. Section 8 concludes.

# **2 Setting of the study**

In Article 27, the Organic Law of the Bolivian Police of 1985 stipulates that the Police is the entity in charge of the provision of ID cards to citizens. At the local level, the Identification Units are the bodies responsible for administering this act. In La Paz, the city where this study takes place, ID cards are issued at two Identification Units. Each of these Units is located at two distant points in the city: one is in the downtown area and one in the rich south zone. However, the jurisdiction of each office does not coincide with the neighborhood of residence, and individuals can obtain their ID cards in either of these two offices. The downtown Identification Unit is by far the largest in the city. At the time of this study, it was issuing roughly 95 percent of the total number of ID cards per day in the city — approximately 1,200 cards per day.

To renew a national ID card, an individual needs to bring a proof of identity to the Identification Unit, and pay an application fee of BS 17 (USD 2.5). Acceptable documents as proof of identity include expired ID card, birth certificate, current (i.e. not expired) driving license, military ID card, passport, school ID card, or electoral list fraud prevention card. Upon presentation of a valid proof of identity, the applicant gets randomly assigned to a renewal table at the Unit. In the downtown Identification Unit, the setting for this study, there are 41 renewal tables, each of whom has a police officer permanently assigned to it. As soon as the applicant gets to his renewal table, he needs to hand over his proof of identity and the token with the renewal table number assigned to. The police officer assigned to the table then needs to locate the vital records of the applicant, which are kept at a Vital Records Archive maintained by the Police located at the basement of the building and only accessible to police officers. Once the vital records of the applicant have been located, the last name of the applicant is called and the applicant needs then to go through a series of steps to complete the renewal process. These renewal steps include paying for the application fee at a Financial Services and Cashier Operations office, getting a photograph taken, fingerprinting and, if needed, getting marital status, occupation, and residence updated. Upon completion of all these steps, the ID card renewal process is considered completed and the card is sent for lamination. The individual then can pick up the ID card within 24 hours from the Identification Unit.

The simple administrative steps required to complete the renewal process are, in practice, a lengthy process. Renewing a national ID card in Bolivia has long been associated with red tape, bureaucratic delay, corruption, and the provision of different service quality by police officers to applicants based on their characteristics (e.g. World Bank (2000), Mansilla (2003), Quintana (2003), and Wanderley (2007)). Further, administrative shortcomings are pervasive within this process. For instance, vital records are often reported as missing.<sup>3</sup> The Identification Unit has a poor archiving system, which is based only on the last name of the applicant, and therefore results in many missing vital records. To the extent that the Unit holds more than 1

> 3 Other reasons why the applicants might not be able to complete the renewal process include misspelling of names (due to typing mistakes incurred by the police officers), duplicate cards, and long waiting times.

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