Antiquated data entry forms using Acrobat PDF files is from another decade and wastes everyone’s time

You find them all over the Province of PEI’s website – Adobe Acrobat form applications – Small Claims Court, IRAC, Seniors Home Repair, everywhere.

You can enter data and print the form. You cannot save your data if you need to stop and start later.

If you make a mistake the whole thing can blow up in your face. Then you start again.

This is strictly stop-gap technology from the 1990s.

Over at the Supreme Court, it’s worse. The forms are not fillable in most cases. The lawyers all over the Island have to type – can you believe it- the forms again.

With the tens of millions the Province of PEI spends on computers and people, what is the problem?

If they want to use Acrobat for screen fill-in, then get the latest software, standardize all government forms on it. Upgrade the forms to allow the ability to save a copy on your computer. 

Acrobat is not an elegant solution. Usually organizations with the IT staffing smaller than the Province use HTML or better screen entry programs. The capture the data, save intermediate results on the users computer and write the data to the government servers.

For the love of God, don’t run over to DeltaWare and contract this out.

If the IT people at the Province can’t do this – send them on training. It’s not rocket science.

Technology should save time and money.

The old Acrobat solution at the Province is a kludge, a decade behind the technology curve. It’s not the worst government system in North America but in the same class.