About Public Services Guide
What this site is
Public Services Guide documents the bureaucratic procedures you cannot opt out of — the steps, documents, fees, and timing that a statute, a regulator, or a ministry has set for you. If renewing a passport, registering an address, opening a bank account, or enrolling in health insurance felt confusing the first time, that is the gap this site exists to close. Each guide tells you what to bring, what it will cost, and what to expect.
What we cover
The corpus today spans four categories — government, finance, healthcare, and housing — across 22 countries and growing. Concrete examples: passport renewals, address registrations, tax-ID issuance (CURP, RFC, My Number, BSN), residence permits, bank account openings, statutory and regulated-private health insurance enrolments, driver's licence applications, and foreign-buyer property procedures. New countries and new topics are added cycle by cycle as contributors complete first-hand verifications.
The editorial principle
This site covers procedures whose steps are set by law or regulation. A procedure qualifies when its shape — documents, fees, timing, sequence — is prescribed by an external authority a citizen cannot opt out of: a statute, a code provision, a ministerial directive, a regulator-issued rule, an executive ordinance, or a court rule. The institution running the procedure can be a government agency or a regulated private entity — a bank executing KYC under central-bank rules, a statutory health insurer following social-insurance code, a telco following regulator-issued SIM-registration rules. What unifies them is that the procedural shape is not the executing institution's choice; it is prescribed by law.
This is the test that decides edge cases. The four-category enumeration above is what is in the corpus today; the principle is what decides what gets added next.
What we do not cover
- Legal advice. Guides explain procedural shape, not how the law applies to your specific situation. For that you need a lawyer or accredited advisor.
- Product comparisons or affiliate recommendations. No "best bank" lists, no "top health insurer" rankings, no sponsored placements. If a guide names a specific institution it is because the procedure runs through that institution by law or regulation, not because we recommend it.
- Private platform onboarding. Setting up a payment app, a streaming subscription, or a workplace tool is set by that company's terms of service, not by statute. Out of scope.
- First-person storytelling. Lived experience belongs in the verification trail on each guide, not as a guide of its own.
Who runs this
Public Services Guide is an independent project maintained by Gani Mohamed Parakadhullah. It is not affiliated with any government, bank, insurer, or commercial service. The site has no advertising, no affiliate links, and no paid placements. Today the project is supported by the maintainer's own time and by contributor sign-offs; when a sustainable funding channel is in place it will be disclosed on the /support page.
How we stay trustworthy
Every claim in a guide cites an official source — the statute, the regulator's rule page, the ministry's portal, the institution's published policy. Each guide carries a verification trail: contributors who have completed the procedure end-to-end sign off on the guide, and higher-stakes categories (finance, immigration) require multiple sign-offs before a guide is marked verified. Freshness badges warn readers when a guide has not been re-verified for six months and again at twelve months.
Content is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 — free to use and adapt with attribution; derivatives must keep the same licence.
Contact and corrections
Spot something wrong? Open an issue on the contribute page, or email [email protected] for general queries, [email protected] for content corrections, and [email protected] for security reports. Corrections to procedural facts are prioritised over editorial polish.