Forms and Publications

What It Is

Offering easy access to online forms and other publications is a best practice for managing your agency website. Link to appropriate federal portals that offer forms and publications from across the government.

Our Online Forms Checklist (PDF, 39 KB, 2 pages, July 2008) provides a set of best practices to help you design online forms that are easy for your customers to understand and use.

Why It's Important

Your customers want fast, easy service—24 hours a day, 7 days a week. They don't want to have to wait in line, on the phone, or until your office is open for business, to get forms and publications they need to accomplish their objectives.

OMB Policies for Federal Agency Public Websites require agencies to (#1A) "disseminate information to the public in a timely, equitable, efficient and appropriate manner," and (#2A) "maximize the quality, objectivity, utility, and integrity of information and services provided to the public." By providing easy access to your agency's forms and publications, you can help the public find the documents they need to quickly get things done on your website, without having to call, email, or go in-person. This can save valuable time for both your agency and the public, and provides for a better customer experience.

Implementation Guidance

• Identify your agency's most commonly requested and commonly used forms and publications and make sure that they're advertised prominently and can be reached quickly on your agency website.
• If you offer forms on your website, link to appropriate federal forms portals, to help the public find other forms from across government. Search for government forms on USA.gov.
• If you offer publications on your website, link to appropriate federal publications portals, to help the public find other publications from across government. Current federal publications portals are Publications.USA.gov and GPOAccess.gov.
• If your agency's forms or publications (or both) are not available for viewing, downloading, or completing online, then—at a minimum—provide instructions on how to order them.
• Provide public use forms in an easy-to-read, fillable format, if possible.

Examples

• IRS Forms and Publications - Internal Revenue Service
• Forms Management - U.S. Department of Agriculture
• Forms page - U.S. Small Business Administration
• Catalog of U.S. Government Publications - Government Printing Office

Resources

• Online Forms Checklist (PDF, 39 KB, 2 pages, July 2008)
• Creating Usable Online Forms - Usability.gov

Many agencies follow this best practice, which is part of the guidelines and best practices published by the Interagency Committee on Government Information to aid agencies' implementation of OMB's Policies for Federal Public Websites.