4 ms·

What’s the benefit of this? I don’t understand what problem it solves.

breck 3y ago
Good question. The size of the problem will vary greatly by individual and their location. Do you live somewhere with a well run government operation? I'm currently dealing with a complicated situation in California. I live 2,600 miles away and so have to resort to their "online" forms. It's a labyrinth of PDFs, third party providers, error conditions, and broken systems. I know that there's actually a universal solution to this problem that would work everywhere. If such a system were in place, I would have been able to simply download the text schemas for the forms I need (the Specifications), and complete them using a text editor, then send those in (via a simple plain text email, for example). Of course, people would build more user friendly interfaces on top of that flow, but if things were set up to support that flow, not only would that flow be possible but all flows on top should also be better.
- dave4420 3y ago
  I’m in the UK. I wouldn’t say our central government is well run, but their forms are usually easy to fill in online. Local government forms are more variable. But I don’t have to fill in many government forms. Your solution seems geared to the problem of physically filling out the form (entering values in to specific fields, showing/hiding further fields based on those earlier fields, data validation)… but does not seem to have anything to say about the problem of making the form easy to understand (does it use language that’s easy to understand? omit fields they already have the answers to?) which is more useful to me.
  - breck 3y ago
    > the problem of making the form easy to understand (does it use language that’s easy to understand? omit fields they already have the answers to?) Great feedback, thanks! You are right, I basically just said "we should have TCP/IP for government forms", without explaining what would happen next if we had that kind of reliable and universal infrastructure. I just added the part below: # The Golden Age of Forms So far I've described a new infrastructure that could underlie all government forms worldwide. But the revolutionary part would happen next. On top of this infrastructure, people could build new tools to make it fantastically easy for citizens to interact with government forms. For example, a citizen could have a program on their personal computer that keeps a copy of every possible Specification for every government form in the world. The program could save their information securely and locally. The citizen could then use this program to complete and submit any government form in seconds. They would never have to enter the same information twice, because the program would have all the Specifications and would know how to map the fields accurately. Imagine if autocomplete were perfect and worked on every form. Documentation could be great because everyone building forms would be relying and contributing to the universal Specification Language. The common infrastructure would enable strong network effects where when form builders improve one form they'd improve many. Private enterprises could also leverage the Specification Language and read and write forms in the same vernacular to bring the benefits of this system beyond citizenship to all organizational interactions.

Good question. The size of the problem will vary greatly by individual and their location. Do you live somewhere with a well run government operation? I'm currently dealing with a complicated situation in California. I live 2,600 miles away and so have to resort to their "online" forms. It's a labyrinth of PDFs, third party providers, error conditions, and broken systems. I know that there's actually a universal solution to this problem that would work everywhere. If such a system were in place, I would have been able to simply download the text schemas for the forms I need (the Specifications), and complete them using a text editor, then send those in (via a simple plain text email, for example). Of course, people would build more user friendly interfaces on top of that flow, but if things were set up to support that flow, not only would that flow be possible but all flows on top should also be better.

dave4420 3y ago
I’m in the UK. I wouldn’t say our central government is well run, but their forms are usually easy to fill in online. Local government forms are more variable. But I don’t have to fill in many government forms. Your solution seems geared to the problem of physically filling out the form (entering values in to specific fields, showing/hiding further fields based on those earlier fields, data validation)… but does not seem to have anything to say about the problem of making the form easy to understand (does it use language that’s easy to understand? omit fields they already have the answers to?) which is more useful to me.
- breck 3y ago
  > the problem of making the form easy to understand (does it use language that’s easy to understand? omit fields they already have the answers to?) Great feedback, thanks! You are right, I basically just said "we should have TCP/IP for government forms", without explaining what would happen next if we had that kind of reliable and universal infrastructure. I just added the part below: # The Golden Age of Forms So far I've described a new infrastructure that could underlie all government forms worldwide. But the revolutionary part would happen next. On top of this infrastructure, people could build new tools to make it fantastically easy for citizens to interact with government forms. For example, a citizen could have a program on their personal computer that keeps a copy of every possible Specification for every government form in the world. The program could save their information securely and locally. The citizen could then use this program to complete and submit any government form in seconds. They would never have to enter the same information twice, because the program would have all the Specifications and would know how to map the fields accurately. Imagine if autocomplete were perfect and worked on every form. Documentation could be great because everyone building forms would be relying and contributing to the universal Specification Language. The common infrastructure would enable strong network effects where when form builders improve one form they'd improve many. Private enterprises could also leverage the Specification Language and read and write forms in the same vernacular to bring the benefits of this system beyond citizenship to all organizational interactions.