What is Open Data and why does ClearGov love it?
How does ClearForms work?
ClearForms works to collect and interpret data through Forms. Applicants complete forms and each submission in ClearForms automatically creates basic open data - no need to send things to a separate open data portal. You control which fields and information are included in the public open data when you set up your Form. We will discuss Open Data more in this article.
What is ClearForms?
ClearForms is a simple, low-cost platform that lets you create online versions of government submissions, making them simpler, faster, and more effective without the need for technical knowledge, IT support, or expensive custom software. Because you or someone on your team does the setup themselves, you're always in control of how things work on ClearForms. And, because we're "self-service" technology, we can provide governments with access to excellent digital tools.
And ClearForms isn't just for online forms, it also works to track what you do behind the scenes for every application - things like getting reviews and approvals and collecting community feedback/ survey responses all happen on the platform (and are easy to do on mobile or desktop).
Forms collect Data
Once you've published a Form, ClearForms will give you a URL link to share with your constituents. If you already have a place on your website with information about the form, simply add a link to that page.
When constituents click the link, they'll be guided through the permitting submission from start to finish.
As an admin, You can see everything your constituents are doing from your admin dashboard.
Open Data
ClearForms works to collect and interpret data through Forms. Applicants complete forms and each submission in ClearForms automatically creates basic open data - no need to send things to a separate open data portal. You control which fields and information are included in the public open data when you set up your Form.
The expectation that governments should provide public access to Open Data is relatively recent. Because the government is an extension of and in service to our communities, there's been a movement to ensure that as much of the information gathered by the government is publicly available.
Many small and medium-sized governments don't have the time or the technical capacity to support stand-alone open data portals. That's why we created the Stats section of the Start page of every ClearForms form.
Stats Page and Data Visualiser
Because ClearForms collects data in a systematic, machine-readable format, it's easy for our software to display that data publicly. We let each government decide, for each field, whether or not that information should be included in Open Data and be visible on the stats page.
- Number of submissions completed
- The average time to complete the form
- How many have been launched/ halted/ completed
- Chart that shows the distribution of launches over time.
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Data visualizer, with visualizations based on field type.
- For example, multiple choice fields are visualized as pie charts, and address data appears on a map. To the right, there are links to click into individual submissions.
Public Data Search allows people to explore the data and find something specific. If you select an individual form, either by searching or selecting it from the Activity section, you're taken to an Activity Detail page for each submission. Again, the data that appears is governed by which fields are set to Open Data by the form administrator
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