Government Forms Should Be Good Form

“Why is it so hard?!?”

Government is ubiquitous. Unless you’re someone who lives off the grid (in which case you’ll never come across this article), we all have to interact with government in some way, at some time. It could be as minimal as paying taxes once a year. Maybe you’re more civically engaged and vote or take part in town hall meetings and political rallies. For the go-getters out there, maybe you start a business and register with the federal government and get various permits from state or local government. Regardless of the type of interaction, one thing holds true: people expect their interactions with government to be lengthy, frustrating, and broken. What if we could change this? Where would we start? I’d start with one of the most common touchpoints: the government form.

A San Francisco government form. Photo by SF Digital Services

Government forms are often on paper or have been digitized (but are really the same paper form turned into an interactive PDF). They are often confusing with lots of text and no clear logic or flow. The information you need often isn’t where you need it, making each form a scavenger hunt for answers (sounds fun, right?). At their core, government forms are transactional. An applicant provides the required information about themselves or something related to themselves, and a government worker processes and approves that information — assuming there are no issues (spoiler alert: there are often issues). But government forms don’t have to be purely transactional. What if we saw government forms as an opportunity to build trust? What if we saw government forms as a medium for building a positive relationship between government and the people it serves? To do that, here are a few tips for government workers who create and manage forms:

Help applicants understand the process

• Make next steps clear, including expected wait times. It’s stressful not knowing whether you’ve done something correctly or what to expect. Clearly laying out next steps helps applicants know where they are in the process. Communicating expected wait times allays their concerns that their form has been lost or mishandled. Bonus: it stops them from calling you to ask about the status of their application.
• Explain why you are asking for certain information and what you will do with it. This is especially important if you are asking for sensitive information. Doing so mitigates fears that information will be misused and strengthens the perception that government is purposeful and thoughtful in its policies and requirements. Transparency is critical for building trust. Bonus: if you don’t know what you’ll do with the information collected from a certain question, maybe you don’t need to ask that question.
• Make it clear when the applicant’s responsibility is fulfilled. This provide the applicant with peace of mind that they have done everything that is required of them. This is also an opportunity to appreciate or celebrate the applicant’s effort to fill out the form correctly. Processing a form is laborious, but so is filling one out.

Demonstrate that you value the applicant’s time

• Simplify information to only what is absolutely necessary. This minimizes confusion and maximizes the likelihood that what you write will be read. For information that is helpful but not mission critical, a common best practice is to move that information somewhere that is easy to access, but not up-front. This could be a separate webpage of helpful information with hyperlinks or the backside of a piece of paper. The idea here is to emphasize only what an applicant needs to know, yet provide them with an easy way to get more details, should they want them.
• Put information where an applicant would need it. Often information is put on one page and the form fields are put on a separate page. This forces the applicant to flip between the two pages if they need clarity. Instead, consider placing information next to their related form fields. If the applicant needs to reference an earlier answer, put that section or form field on the same page for easier reference.
• Use visual design principles to make the form easier to navigate. Don’t put form fields too close to one another. Leave white space. Group related information or form fields together. Use headers. Keep form fields short when the required answer is a short one (e.g. phone number). Bonus: these small adjustments often remove the need for explanatory text, making your form more intuitive and simple.

The last question I’ll ask is the most provocative: Do we even need government forms?

Ok, maybe too provocative. It’s more of a two-part question.

1. Do all the questions on a form need to be asked or can you get the required information from other sources? Often another government department will have the information you need. Finding ways to connect databases can increase efficiency for government workers and simplify forms for applicants.
2. What ways could an applicant start this process with the government other than a form? Applicants fill out government forms because they are requesting a service from the government. What if all they had to do was scan their ID and click a button, then all the required information was pulled from various credible sources. Is this too farfetched? There may be other approaches that are at our fingertips — we just haven’t thought of them yet.

For the time being, government forms are here to stay and they play an important role. For the short-term, let’s make government forms simpler and easier for applicants to fill out, which often makes them more efficient to process and less error-prone. For the long-term, let’s develop new, creative ways to accomplish what forms do. If it results in retiring a form, I doubt anyone will miss it.