IT Landscape of Costa Rica

What is E-Government?

According to the World Bank, E-government refers to “the use of information and communications technologies to improve the efficiency, effectiveness, transparency and accountability of government”. E-government can be divided into Government-to-Government (G2G) and Government to Citizens (G2C).¹⁴

E-Government in Costa Rica

Government-to-Government
In Costa Rica, this sector of the E-Government is practically non-existent. Inter-ministry communication within the government is not developed and every ministry operates as an isolated “island of information”.

Government-to-Citizens
As part of its strategy, the government of Costa Rica started an initiative called “Gobierno Digital” (Digital Government). The interactive information is available in some of the linked sites, but the program is only at its early stages. Ninety-one percent of the central public administration entities have their own Web pages. For public administration entities on the local level, this percentage decreases to 7.4%. Most of the websites are for information purposes only. However, payments for some public services can be made through two major state-owned banks: Banco Nacional de Costa Rica and Banco de Costa Rica. Also, companies can pay social security benefits through Banco Popular. Finally, every Costa Rican citizen has a government-provided e-mail address which can be, and is, used by the government to communicate with its citizens.⁴⁰

At age eighteen every Costa Rican is issued a national ID by the government. It must be produced by citizens when they engage in financial transactions and in instances requiring proof of identity and legal age. Every ID has a unique number to which all personal records of an individual, along with the individual’s photo. Prior to 1997, all this information was paper-base. In the summer of 1998, the Costa Rican government hired Unisys de Costa Rica, (a subsidiary of Unisys Corporation) under a $5 million systems integration contract, to provide the hardware and services for a new, modernized ID plastic card system for 2 million citizens. The ID cards will use biometric security technology to store digital fingerprints. The software's graphical user interface and documentation will be in Spanish whereas now it is contained electronically in a nation-wide database.⁴¹^,⁴²


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