An experience with the Massachusetts online application for an ID (just testing) got me to thinking.
Back in the day, that is the early 1990s', we got PC's with Wordperfect 5.0 at work. One of the things I played around with then was using its table tools to create Wordperfect versions of our printed forms. A good part of the motivation was just the challenge in seeing how far I could get and what was involved in getting as close a facsimile as possible. IIRC sometimes I was able to create a version where you could enter data. And I think the ASCS/FSA forms shop followed a similar path for some years, replacing the IBM composers they were using in the 1960s with PCs and Wordperfect.
The next step seems (when I retired I no longer was involved on the creation side) to have been creating online forms with data entry. I don't know the software behind those forms, but over the years I've run into them.
But when you look at that process, it's a survival, like an appendix or wisdom teeth, left over from prior times.
Currently I seem to be encountering the interview process--a series of windows which ask for data piece by piece, with "back" and "continue" options and often with the data entered determined the next sequence of windows to be displayed. That seemed to be the case with the MA application, also with the Kaiser Permanente appointment process I just completed, and in a modified form with TurboTax's process. TurboTax is interesting because the end result of your interview entries is a completed set of tax forms for the user, although it looks as if the data sent to the IRS and VA tax people is stripped down to the data elements.
Perhaps 50 years from now we'll no longer be using forms?
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