For almost two decades, statutory, judicial, and regulatory actions have required or advised federal agencies to collect information electronically whenever feasible. The 1998 Government Paperwork Elimination Act required federal agencies to begin accepting electronic information by 2003, and further stipulated “if [an] agency anticipates receiving 50,000 or more electronic submittals of a particular form, multiple methods of submitting such forms electronically must be in place.” More recently, the 2013 Open Data Policy stipulated that agencies should default to electronic filing (e-filing) and that they “must use machine-readable and open formats for information as it is collected or created.” By ensuring that data is born digital, e-filing can greatly increase the accuracy and accessibility of government data.
Despite these mandates, the federal government’s electronic data collection includes significant gaps. Even when an agency offers the option to submit forms electronically, many users still elect to provide information on paper, especially if the electronic option is cumbersome. For example, although the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) met its longstanding goal of achieving an 80 percent electronic rate for individual tax returns, only 36 percent of users e-filed their employment tax forms in the Form 94x series for 2015. Employers looking to use the electronic version of the 94x series must clear several hurdles, including waiting up to 45 days to receive an electronic filing number and using specialty software. The Electronic Tax Administration Advisory Committee has said the IRS is unlikely to meet its 80 percent goal for this series until it implements a new electronic signature process for these forms.
When data is not born digital, it becomes costly and time consuming to transform it into a structured dataset that can be accessed and reused. Accordingly, many key datasets are never digitized. During the second quarter of 2015, 13 percent of open government data downloads were in PDF format. The Small Business Administration and the Department of State had the highest rates of PDF datasets, at 87 percent and 58 percent, respectively.
The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) should update implementation guidance for the Government Paperwork Elimination Act to incentivize end-users to use e-filing for all forms for which an agency anticipates more than 50,000 annual submissions. Agencies have several tools at their disposal to increase the likelihood of end-users choosing e-filling. Making the e-filing option the default, and presenting it in a way that is easy to use, can drive up its use. The Free Application for Federal Student Aid, for example, has made online submissions the default and now receives more than 95 percent of submissions online. Putting several required forms together online can provide a “one-stop-shop” that makes it easy to use electronic filing for all of them. At the same time, disincentives for using paper forms can drive users to e-filing: The Electronic Filing Incentive for the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, which charges between $200 - $400 for paper applications, has produced a 93 percent e-filing rate.
The Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs should ensure that electronic filing facilitates rapid, accurate open data in areas of high public interest. Recent rulemakings have shown the importance of changing from paper forms to making information electronically available in key regulatory areas. Over the past several years, the Federal Communications Commission has required television and radio stations to electronically upload their records of political ad buys online. This replaced the previous practice of keeping paper records, which made it impossible to survey broad patterns of political ad spending. In May 2016, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration similarly ruled that large employers will have to file reports on injuries and illnesses electronically so that the data can easily be made public.
E-filing allows for electronic data protection and pre-submission validation (e.g., a phone number field can be set to only allow the entry of ten numerals) rather than the unrestricted way information is collected on paper. It also eliminates the substantial risk of introducing inaccuracies when moving data from paper-based to electronic forms.
Ensuring government data is born digital makes data collection faster, reduces errors in the data, and enables agencies to open the data more easily and rapidly. More specifically, uniform electronic filing will save taxpayers money and improve data accuracy. Many agencies have had to print, copy, and store paper forms, incurring costs that can be eliminated by switching to electronic data collection. For example, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office's Electronic Filing System has saved an estimated $5,243,440 in paper costs alone in twelve years of electronic data submission.
The President’s budget should specify e-filing where it is appropriate and can make a significant difference, both to realize the potential savings from e-filing and to ensure that funds are available to make the transition from paper to electronic formats. For example, President Obama’s 2017 budget requests that all tax-exempt organizations required to file Form 990 series returns must do so electronically. That proposal, which would also require the IRS to release Form 990 data electronically, would let organizations apply for a waiver to submit their forms on paper and would allow a transition of up to three years to comply with the new rule. The President’s budget should continue to include this initiative and use similar language to support e-filing across the federal government.
Overall, e-filing makes it more efficient for businesses to submit data and for agencies to publish it, saving time and labor costs. Ultimately, adopting e-filing across government will enable businesses to input key information only once and have it applied across all the forms they are required to submit to federal agencies. This approach has the potential to greatly improve efficiency and reduce the regulatory burden on business.