Having been in government most of my life, there are two basic reasons
for the amount of forms; one of which has to do with our democratic
system (and which can't be "fixed"), the other has to do with a lack of
skill in forms design.

Forms often represent interests: corporate, private, public, union, the
NRA, the ACLU, Republicans, Democrats, you name it. The information
being captured often reflects the interests of a particular group.
Anyone who has submitted a bid to a governmental agency, or, for that
matter, had to manage one from within, will run into a graphic example
of this. Tax forms show similar interests in their design. Those
interests are reflected ultimately by our elected officials, and by us.
One person's "waste" is another person's "interest" - democracies aren't
supposed to be "efficient". Personally, I would have it no other way,
and this is one of the reasons why government is somewhat different than
the private sector, where those interests can be reflected within a much
more confined operating realm. This leads to my next point:

Forms design appears to have become a lost art. Given the fact that the
above cited interests change quite frequently (and the underlying forms
with them), what you have is a cumulative, reactive, continuous redesign
of existing forms, not a design driven by good process analysis and
forms design principles. "Web based forms" were supposed to free us of
this, but, as is often the case, good old fashioned forms design
principles apply to web sites as much as they do to paper forms. Without
them, both can be equally retched.

There are always going to be government forms that folks hate. Articles
like this have been appearing throughout my lifetime, regardless of
which party is in power. That's the way our system works. But good forms
design based on solid process analysis can make those forms a lot easier
to live with. That's something we can contribute! Because of the
changing nature of the interests involved, this is one area that
government really needs to focus on perhaps more than the private
sector, and, unfortunately, more often than not doesn't.


Dwight Wallis, CRM
Records Administrator
Multnomah County Records Management Program
1620 SE 190th Avenue
Gresham, OR 97233
phone: (503)988-3741
fax: (503)988-3754
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