Enhancing Citizen Voice in Government

Improving Government Forms

The guidance document, Improving government forms: on paper, on the phone and online, and the associated Excel checklists were developed for the National Audit Office by the London School of Economics Public Policy Group. We are currently running a consultation on the following documents:

• Improving government forms: on paper, on the phone and online - Draft Checklist
• Checklist Guidance

We would welcome any constructive comments you may wish to make as part of this consultation, but would like to ask you to focus in particular on the following questions:

• Are the checklists readable? Are the questions easy to understand?
• Is the format of the checklists intuitive as you work through the document?
• Do the questions in the checklists make it straightforward to judge whether forms (accessed on paper, online or by telephone) are easy or difficult for the citizen?
• Are the checklists the right length? Are any of the topics unnecessary or is any important aspect missing?
• Is the calculation of weighting of difficulty and importance easy to understand?

We will be consulting academics and customer representative groups throughout the summer and will feed all the comments into the final version of the guidance and checklists. The final checklists will be published as an online tool on the NAO website.

We would be very grateful for any comments or suggestions for improvement you may have, by Friday 11 September. Please send your comments to: Jane Tinkler at j.tinkler@lse.ac.uk.
 

Department for Work and Pensions: Communicating with Customers

In 2008 and 2009, the LSE team worked with the NAO on the report Department for Work and Pensions: Communicating with Customers, published in May this year and available here. During this work the PPG developed and updated a checklist from Improving and reviewing government forms, which was published in December 2003 to support the NAO report Difficult Forms. In particular, it includes new checklists to assess the difficulty for customers of communicating with government departments using online forms or via phone services.
 

Difficult Forms

In 2003 the Public Policy Group undertook a study for the National Audit Office on Difficult Forms. The study examined how government organisations design and process forms to acquire information. This work involves the design of an online census of government forms and running a number of focus groups in London, Edinburgh and Leeds, with relevant citizens themed around each of the five case study forms. The team also produced a practical guide to improving and reviewing forms for government organisations. The study is available here.

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