A form is most often a constituent's first introduction to government. As such, a government form should be attractive, functional, ease the pain for constituents to submit information, and make use of the most advanced technologies at hand. In America, all agencies in the US Government host forms on the government Web sites.

Currently, almost half (48.8% as of December 2008) of all government forms are not fillable requiring a constituent to download the form, hand fill-in and fax the form back to the host agency (an archaic workflow).

In addition, many government forms are pathetic in design. Many forms are not constructed properly, do not have agency logos on the form, do not have ample space to fill in data, do not make use of calculations, and more than 85% of all government forms are not secure —meaning anyone using Adobe Acrobat (for the more than 95% PDF forms hosted) can change the fields and the form design content.

The new CTO office needs to move aggressively to coordinate all eForms used in government, set standards for design and construction, and move toward data workflows where forms can be submitted online and electronically routed (thereby saving time for government workers to re-key data and saving paper in government —a huge environmental protection issue).

America should set the standard for eForms in government and be a role model for all governments in the world that engage their constituents in government actions. Currently, we have a pathetic display of forms hosted on government Web sites. Some forms are hard to find requiring constituents to poke around Web sites to find a form, a few offices host forms in different file formats, most (PDF) forms are not enabled with Adobe Reader usage rights meaning a constituent cannot save data once typed on a form, and many other form construction problems exist in virtually every agency.

Let's have the CTO office embark on planning and coordinating all forms use in government that say "I am proud to be an American form, I am easy to complete, and I can help ease you through the complex task of processing your request."

ted padova