Going Paperless - On the Evaluation of Electronic Form Technologies

Most organizations rely on the use of forms for their daily business. These forms are more and more replaced by electronic equivalents. This change is usually a significant investment, therefore it is important to understand the requirements and features of available systems. In this paper, we explain some of the common important requirements, and discuss how form technologies can be evaluated by an organization. To illustrate the approach, we describe an exemplary evaluation, based on a project undertaken at the University of Auckland with the aim of making all forms electronic. Our results show that current technologies differ greatly in the requirements that are addressed, and that no single form technology satisfies all the common requirements.