Borries Schwesinger

Between paper forms and e-government:
the interfaces of public services in Europe

For many years now there has been a constant call for cutting the red tape in the provision of public services. City councils, government departments and agencies in many European countries are urged to act and communicate in a friendlier manner and closer to citizens' needs, to be less authoritarian, more helpful and of course, to be more cost-effective. Indeed, a popular claim is that the public services should be offered in a way which resembles more the private sector, and which treats clients as valuable customers.

I want to explore how agencies and councils in different European countries deal with these emerging demands, and how they shape their communication and interaction interfaces. In particular, I will focus on forms as standardised and typical means of claiming or requesting public services by citizens. In presenting case studies for benefit claim forms from the United Kingdom, France, the Netherlands and Germany, I want to contribute to a more international view on the role information design can play in providing good public services.

One solution to enhance the quality and efficiency of the public service has become known as ‘e-Government’: a buzzword and umbrella term for a variety of efforts to use new media technologies, in particular the Internet, to support public–government interactions. Several government initiatives have led, for example, to the setting up of web portals that sometimes simply allow the download of PDF forms; more sophisticated systems allow tax returns to be lodged online. However, from an information design perspective many questions remain around the implementation of e-Government.

Arguably, there are important questions about the integration of new technologies into the whole communication process, their usability and accessibility, their overall design quality and their effective benefit to the users.

By presenting and reviewing case studies from different European countries I want to find answers to these questions and give an insight into different approaches for offering public services via both traditional and new means of communication.

Borries Schwesinger is a freelance information, book and corporate designer (www.borries-schwesinger.de). He is particularly interested in exploring design principles of forms and other standardised means of communication. He is the author and designer of the book Formulare gestalten (www.designing-forms.de) where he addresses the overall question ‘How to design better forms?’

Borries Schwesinger

Between paper forms and e-government: the interfaces of public services in Europe

Between paper forms and e-government:
the interfaces of public services in Europe