Repository of Electronic Forms (REForms)

Abstract

One of the early stages of electronic government is to provide easy access to information through World Wide Web. In the developing world, including Pakistan, there are still very few public institutes that have a functional website. Even those institutes who have websites, access to various forms which are required by citizens for different services are not available. Thus even in the age of technology, it is still difficult for a person living in remote areas to get a form to access the services like education, healthcare, justice system and employment etc. in Pakistan. It is a problem worth considering if we think of a common man living in far flung areas who has to travel to public offices just to obtain these forms. Due to increase in availability of internet, even in rural areas there is a need for making the online access to these forms possible. The project aims to make forms of public institutes available to general public for their consumption over the World Wide Web. The online provisioning of these forms will facilitate citizens and will save millions of rupees that are spent on boarding and loading expenses for obtaining the hardcopies of forms from public offices. The information system built will be a single interface for all the different government offices. It will offer different intuitive ways of searching these forms keeping in view the literacy and computer know-how of citizens. The forms will be retrieved either through web crawler; in case it is available on a website or a hardcopy will be obtained and made available. The system will also enable individuals and organizations to submit forms in the information system which will also become searchable.