What I learned in two years of moving government forms online (2018)
Well-written article, useful insights, total misunderstanding of the way things like this should be done.There's an old saying: don't pave cow paths. That's exactly what he was doing. He was putting a different front end on an existing process. You end up with a total nightmare.Instead, this should be done department-by-department, app-by-app. Design the process from the bottom up. For example: a form to request some document. Start with the documents: how are they stored? Should they be stored differently? Are they in a database? Should we really even be storing documents, or should they just be database entries? For that matter, should the department that manages them even exist? (Here in Chicago, the answer was no. They merged the County Recorder of Deeds office with the County Clerk.)You should never just move things online. The web is different, and enables different business processes. Change the process first. Forms come later.