must submit their appeals in person. The possibility of filing and paying taxes online is convenient to taxpayers as it reduces the time and costs of compliance while also mitigating calculation errors. Taxpayers would benefit from integrated systems that offer the possibility of submitting appeals online, which could in return optimize the response time by tax authorities, provide more security, and reduce uncertainty.

The absence of electronic or online resources for new utility connections or for paying utility bills also adds an extra layer of bureaucracy to citizen interactions with utilities providers as in person processes are oftentimes costlier and time consuming.

In the surveyed economies, the number of procedures between citizens and health care providers for access to services does not vary according to the type of facility, but by the type of service provided. However, patients accessing certain services at PHC centers may experience longer times to treatment than patients who seek access to the same services in hospitals.

Students are assigned to specific primary and secondary schools based on their residential addresses in half of the surveyed economies, which might limit students’ abilities to access quality education regardless of their residency or housing status.

A few general lessons can be drawn from the _Living Life_ pilot. First, the surveys designed for this study attempted to collect data on both the legal/procedural requirements, and the practical side of citizen interaction with governments and services providers. The team concluded that contributor-based data collection is an adequate tool for soliciting responses on legal and procedural regulations, but it does not provide a complete picture of the practical aspects of citizen-government interactions. User experiences vary due to individual circumstances and factors that are not always associated to the legal and regulatory framework applicable to each set of interactions. While contributors can provide accurate information on the legal requirements, documents and procedures undergone by citizens while accessing public services and goods, they cannot represent the variety of experiences faced by different individuals. This was mainly observed while attempting to collect data for areas such as paying taxes, access to health, access to education, and access to utilities. In these areas, the most relevant information regarding interactions lies in the practical experience of respondents rather than on what is written in laws or regulations. Therefore, surveys aimed at collecting data from a representative sample of households would be the optimal approach to retrieve data about citizen-government interactions based on the respondents’ own experiences.

Moving forward, the team should refine and redesign the questionnaires according to the type of data collection – contributor-based or household survey – with relevant questions that target specific audiences. Household surveys must have questions that are crafted in a more straightforward and intuitive manner. Contributor-based questionnaires should be more technical and require respondents to indicate the corresponding legal basis for their answers.

A second lesson learned was that the initial scope of the project was too complex and nuanced to be dealt with using limited human and financial resources. Each area of study requires technical skills, extensive research, and in-depth sector-specific analysis in order to convey the project’s ultimate goal, which is to measure bureaucratic complexity in citizen-government interactions. Moving forward, _Living Life_ would benefit from refinement of its methodology by selecting only two or three areas of study for in-depth data collection and 29 | P a g e