I was both elated and disappointed at the notion of President Obama appointing the nation’s first CTO Officer. I know it’s been some time since the appointment, but I’m late on posts to blogs, Flickr, Facebook, Twitter and a bunch of other sites.
My elation was that our President, being the most tech-savvy President America has had to date, had campaigned on the notion that he would make such an appointment and he indeed did follow through by appointing the nation’s first CTO. When one compares the USA with many 3rd world nations around the globe, America is far behind in developing infrastructure at the executive office level when it comes to technology. The move was long overdue and a good beginning.
My disappointment is that the office is not a cabinet level authority. Once again, we can find many 3rd world nations with minute IT budgets, compared to the USA’s 72 billion dollar IT budget, having one and sometimes two individuals at the cabinet level reporting the status of technology directly to the chief executive. And, some countries have had such cabinet positions more than half a century.
What I find more disturbing is the input from the constituency about the type of duties people would like to see the new CTO tackle. There are issues related to keeping the Internet free, expanding its use, insuring security and protection and a huge laundry list of duties that are already divided among a handful of existing USA Federal Departments. One thing that I haven’t seen is much attention devoted to eGovernment and getting the pathetic state of the USA eGovernment services polished up and made exemplary. In my opinion a lot of work needs to be done in this area.
Why do I say pathetic state of affairs in eGovernment? First, let’s look at what eGovernment is all about. In my opinion there are three primary purposes for eGovernment. They include, first, disseminating information. Provide information about government, government services, marketing tools for promoting commerce, and just about anything one needs to know about government.
The second responsibility of eGovernment in free societies is to engage the constituency in communicating with government. Since 1993 during the Clinton Administration when the first eGovernment Web sites were set up, we enjoyed communicating with government officials and receiving feedback.
The third area and one most important to the Acrobat community is processing transactions. This element of eGovernment is vital to engage people in government services. It is to this area of eGovernment I want to offer a few observations.
There are several societies, non-profit organizations, publications, and other bodies that annually search through government Web sites and rate them in hierarchical order —sometimes providing certificates, medals, plaques, trophies for what one body of judges believes to be the best of eGovernment Web sites in a given year. The current focus is looking at sites that use Web 2.0 services —things like Flickr, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, etc. If your government wing is throwing up YouTube videos of the Governor playing with the family dog on the mansion lawn, you’re likely to get a high rank when it comes to voting for the best of eGovernment Web sites.
I take a bit of a different view of what constitutes a good eGovernment Web site. Quite simply, suppose you’re driving down the Interstate at a high speed and get hit by a truck. You suffer a massive disability and you are in need of a service to help you out. My question is, are you going to be more interested in seeing the Governor playing with the family dog on the mansion lawn or are you more interested in obtaining a form to help you with a service? The sad state of affairs is that if you need a form from any Federal Government Web site or more than 51% of all US State Government Web sites, you’ll be poking around Web pages for hours to find a form if it does exist.
There are 15 Cabinet Secretaries reporting to President Obama representing 15 different departments. There are another 6 positions of cabinet level ranking. Of those offices hosting Web sites, there’s not one (repeat, not one) that has a link on the Home page to a well-designed list of forms. Yet, when looking at one of the most important functions of eGovernment, processing transactions via eForms is something many of us would agree should be a top ranking function of eGovernment.
I believe it’s well and good to know where Secretary Clinton is and what negotiations are pending in our problematic world. But, if you happen to be a visitor to another country and loose your passport, are you more interested in seeing the news or getting a form to obtain a new passport?
Although accessing forms is not made easy on government Web sites, they are available. There is one site www.forms.gov that hosts a number of forms, but it’s not complete, not well organized, and doesn’t get updated often. When you browse government department Web sites, you can find forms by searching the web sites using internal search engines.
What’s the current state of forms hosted by the USA Federal Government. I’ve performed several studies analyzing forms hosted by all 21 departments carrying Presidential Cabinet level authority and found the forms to be, for the most part, substandard. In my rating scheme I looked at a random sample of all government Web sites and rated the forms hosted on a scale I developed. The criteria I used for what I consider to be essential elements in an Adobe PDF form include:
Fillable. With the exception of a few HTML forms found on various federal government Web sites, almost all forms are PDF forms. PDF forms can be made fillable. Rather than printing a form and handwriting data, one can type data on a fillable form using the free Adobe Reader software. My first look was, “are the forms fillable?” Of more than 500 forms I examined, 33% (one-third) were not fillable forms.
Logo. Take a look at any medium-sized to large company and you find elements on all published material consistent and assembled together in well-designed layouts. The first item for any piece published by a company includes a company logo. Logos are part of a company branding its identify. In government, it is critical to brand a government office and display an icon that represents the host office. In regard to forms, a form is typically the first introduction a constituent or visitor has with a government office. One is likely to download a form before interacting with a government official. Therefore, a form is quite often a first impression one has of an office. In my sample, I found more than 73% of USA federal forms are distributed without the office logo or other branding identity.
Design rating. This was a subjective evaluation of a form design. Were the form elements properly placed on the form, did the form have zones for common elements, was the form easy to complete and intuitive? Of those forms with radio buttons/check boxes and comb fields, were the fields designed properly? Of the sample downloads I found more than 40% of the government forms in my opinion poorly designed.
Document Properties. Certain metadata identifying a form title, subject, author, and keywords makes forms easily searchable and identifiable. It’s a critical part of organizing forms. In my sample, I found 73% of the downloads not containing appropriate metadata.
Security. All government forms should be secured to prevent editing the forms. In the sample downloads I found 79% of the forms not secured. Of special interest was the Department of Homeland Security —an agency one would think would be one of the most sensitive in regard to security. I found 80% of the Department of Homeland Security forms not secured.
Enabled. Were the forms enabled with Adobe Reader usage rights so Adobe Reader users could save form data after completing a form. I find this item to be critical for all forms. In my sample, 88% of the forms were not enabled with Reader usage rights.
Accessibility. USA Federal Government is keenly sensitive to providing services for the vision and motion challenged. Forms can be made accessible for people using assistive devices. In my sample I found 65% of the forms I downloaded are not accessible. Of particular interest to me was the US Department of Education —an office that promotes accessible standards and hosts guidelines on accessibility and proper construction of forms. The US Department of Education in my study ranked at the 4th percentile —the worst of all government departments. The forms they host are scanned documents rotated 90 degrees. No legible text is included and the designs are substandard. The Department of Education was so poor in forms hosting that I took the liberty to write to US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan upon his appointment to inform him of the work that needed to be done in his new office. Secretary Duncan did write back and thank me for the input, so hopefully we’ll eventually see improvement in the US Department of Education eGovernment Web site.
Submit Form Button. A submit form button enables the user to submit the completed form back to the host agency. One thing I find absurd is all the propaganda we hear about government going green. Government likes to boast about all the moves they make to help protect our environment. Yet, when it comes to forms, government hasn’t gone green, they merely shifted the paper burden from government to the constituency. If you fill out a form from the USA Federal Government, more than 95% of the time, you need to print the form, fax or hand carry the form back to an agency, and then a government worker needs to enter the data in a computer —a completely archaic process considering the alternatives of using servers to collect and route data.
What can be done about eGovernment in the USA Federal Offices? The new CTO needs to be charged with the responsibility to coordinate all offices in government and develop standards for forms hosting. Charged with the authority to implement a set of standards, the CTO can effectively bring eGovernment to the people to help all citizens ease one’s way through government offices and make processing transactions a relatively easy and green process.