What’s your form? The evolution of government service delivery

Before 1990, everything started with paper. Licences, registrations, applications: all handwritten, stamped, and filed away.

In my early years as a lawyer, I remember attending property settlements with clients clutching paper certificates of title and mortgage documents. They waited their turn in long queues at government offices. Every transaction required physical signatures, physical stamps, and physical handovers.

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Then came the internet. The paper form became the web form.

From the mid-1990s, governments built websites and portals. Suddenly, you could apply for things outside office hours. It felt like progress. Until you had to deal with another department.

Each agency had its own portal, login, and process. When the ATO launched e-Tax in 1999, it was revolutionary. Until you discovered you needed to start from scratch with another service.

Control shifted from filing cabinets to servers. But not from institutions themselves. Citizens gained access, not agency.

The web-form era was about efficiency, not empowerment.

Around 2005, smartphones and social media changed everything. People lived on platforms. Governments followed.

The plat-form era brought smoother interfaces, mobile apps, and better design.

In 2013, we launched Service NSW. It brought dozens of agencies together under one roof. For the first time, citizens could renew a licence, register a business, or check a fine through a single app.

It was a major step forward. But behind the front door, many systems still operated in silos. APIs connected some dots, but not the full picture.

The platform model delivered convenience. Yet governments and tech giants still held the steering wheel.

The citizen was a passenger, not a co-pilot.

Then came 2020. And with it, a pandemic that forced governments to move faster than ever before.

COVID-19 shattered silos. Citizens demanded seamless, trustworthy, real-time services.

In NSW, we launched Dine & Discover vouchers for 4.8 million people in record time. The COVID Safe Check-in system was built in weeks. I’ll never forget watching older citizens use QR codes with confidence. Proof that inclusion follows trust.

This was the uni-form era. Not “uniform” in sameness, but unified in purpose: one front door, one trusted data layer.

Citizens began deciding what to share, with whom, and for how long.

It marked a cultural shift as much as a digital one. Government moved from ownership to stewardship of data. Trust became the organising principle.

Citizens were no longer recipients. They were participants.

Then the crisis faded. And many governments quietly slipped back.

Legacy systems reasserted themselves. Departmental borders hardened. Committees replaced urgency.

Just as governments began adapting to integration, another force emerged: artificial intelligence.

AI doesn’t fit neatly into the old model. It feeds on data. And if that data is fragmented or flawed, the risks multiply.

Australia’s robodebt made this painfully clear. Algorithms built on bad data raised debts against 433,000 people through approximately 794,000 debt transactions. They wrongly recovered $751 million from 381,000 individuals. They caused immense hardship. The Federal Court approved a $1.8 billion settlement to repay wrongly collected debts and wipe outstanding amounts. Further compensation followed. The human cost was far greater. Families were traumatised. Lives were destroyed.

AI without trustworthy data is like a skyscraper built on sand.

Governments can’t simply bolt AI onto legacy systems. They must build clean, connected, citizen-consented data foundations. These foundations must be governed by principles of Security, Privacy, Resilience, Inclusiveness, Transparency, and Ethics.

Only then can AI serve the public interest.

Now we stand on the threshold of Government 4.0: the form-less age.

This is the era of mainstream AI agents. Intelligent systems that talk to each other, share verified data securely, and act on our behalf.

In this world, humans never see a form.

A birth automatically triggers relevant services. A job loss activates training and income support. A licence renewal happens invisibly in the background.

Forward-looking nations are already designing for this future. They’re building systems where services become proactive and anticipatory.

In G4, the form doesn’t disappear because it’s irrelevant. It disappears because it’s integrated.

The boundary between government and citizen softens into a partnership.

And here, application programming interface (API) becomes the unsung hero of the agentic age. They are the grammar of digital government: the standardised language through which AI agents communicate securely across departments, jurisdictions, and even nations.

APIs make interoperability real. They allow systems (and now agents) to understand one another. Without them, agentic government collapses into noise. With them, government becomes orchestrated, composable, and responsive.

In the form-less world, APIs are the oxygen of trust.

The move from paper to web was technological. From web to platform, it’s still technological. From platform to uni-form, cultural. And from uni-form to form-less: philosophical.

This next evolution challenges everything about how governments operate. Who owns the data? Who controls decisions? What does “service delivery” even mean in an intelligent age?

The question is no longer can we digitise, but should we automate? And how do we embed ethics, empathy, and inclusion into the code itself?

How do you predominantly get information from your customers? Whether citizens, businesses, tourists, or refugees?

If it’s still paper, you’re most likely sitting at G0 maturity. If it’s web-based, you’re at G1. If you’re using apps and platforms, you’re at G2. If you’ve achieved a primary unified interface, you’re in G3. And if the form has all but disappeared? If services are proactive, invisible, and powered by AI? You’re entering G4.

This isn’t just a maturity model. It’s a mirror. It reflects not only where your systems are, but how your culture listens, learns, and adapts.

The danger is regression. Drifting back into bureaucracy while the world races ahead.

The opportunity is acceleration. Building systems that earn trust through transparency and deliver outcomes through intelligence.

At the Future Government Institute, we’re launching a Form Assessment Tool. It will help agencies benchmark their progress and plan their evolution from G2 to G3 and beyond.

Because the form is never just a form, it’s the frontline of trust between citizen and state.

In the age of AI, trust is the infrastructure. And APIs are its pipes.