This is a 5 minute read that helps you understand most of the in-and-outs of FormSG.
FormSG is a self-service form builder for government to create online forms that capture classified data, with the goal of replacing paper forms. Since it began in September 2017, it has replaced tens of thousands of paper forms and are used by over 90 agencies such as MOM, MOE, PA, SportSG and TTSH. More than 25,000 officers are already on it. It has advanced features and can be used for not just simple surveys but also complicated workflow forms.
FormSG is built for the public sector and public healthcare clusters. There is no onboarding process. Simply log in with your agency email (e.g. @tech.gov.sg). FormSG works on both Internet and the WOG Intranet.
Unlike most form builders out there, FormSG does not store your data. This means if our database is breached, there is no raw data to hack. There are two secure modes of creating forms.
Email mode: Form responses are sent directly into your specified email(s), and our server never stores a copy of it. Because we do not store responses, it is critical your mailbox is correctly specified and has space, or responses will be lost.
Storage mode (Coming End Apr 2020): Responses are stored, but end-to-end encrypted. On form creation, private key is generated on the client and never seen by our server. On form submission, response is encrypted on the client first, before being sent to our server for storage.
Because we do not store data, we cannot recover your lost data. If you cannot find your email responses, they might have been routed to an obscure Outlook folder set by your mail forwarding rules. Or they might have been quarantined by your agency firewall, which you can contact your AFM/IT department for. If you accidentally delete your email responses, they might still be on the email server, which you should contact your AFM/IT department for help.
Yes we are compliant with IM8, AIAS policy, and DSS. If you have concerns on our compliance, kindly contact us via our Support Form, and mention the specific clause you have concerns on.
Yes, officers can build any number of forms to collect any number of submissions for free.
The only exception is having to pay for SingPass or CorpPass authentication. If your agency has a high volume of SPCP transactions each month, the price per login can be low. At the base tier, the price of SPCP is about $0.25 per login, with a fixed fee of about $2,000/month. We won't be able to advise you on the latest pricing info, and you should contact SPCP rep [email protected] for it.
All you have to do is enter an e-service ID on the Settings tab of your form to enable SPCP:
An e-service ID is a unique billing ID given by the SingPass/CorpPass office to your department's finance team. An invalid e-service ID will yield a 138 error for SingPass and 328 error for CorpPass. If you don’t already have an e-service ID, you can either ask your agency IT department to find an e-service ID to reuse, or contact SPCP rep [email protected] to create a new one. When testing your e-service ID you may log in to our UAT server, https://uat.form.gov.sg and create test forms there. Note that accounts and forms are separate on UAT and Live servers and cannot be transferred over.
To track number of submissions at your e-service ID you may visit the Billing Panel tab on the top right of your forms dashboard:
It is up to you to decide if you want 2FA or 1FA e-service ID. For CorpPass, it is also up to you to decide whether you want authorisation work flows at your e-service ID. Consult SPCP rep on this if you have concerns.
Yes, we are up 24/7. There is no planned maintenance window. Typically once a few months we have a 2 hour maintenance window from 12am - 2am, but most features are constantly deployed without downtime. Because we do not charge for the service we do not have an SLA, but have a measured uptime of 99.999% since we launched. The exception is SingPass and CorpPass, which do have planned maintenance, with which you can contact SPCP rep [email protected] to find out more.
We have multiple tests and detection tools to flag issues on forms. If we detect an issue with your form we will email you. Although rare, if the entire platform has downtime, we will announce it on Workplace@Facebook, and enable a maintenance page on all forms. We have engineers on-call 24/7 to react to issues as fast as we can. If there are issues with your form, you can contact us through our Support Form.
On Email mode, FormSG can handle up to Restricted per entry, and Confidential for the collection of data. This is because FormSG is a Restricted system that can manage Restricted data flowing through it, but ultimately data is stored in your government email, or SGMail, which is a Confidential system that lets you store Confidential collections of data. If however you specify a non-government email to send responses to, then you are not recommended to accept data that is classified Confidential.
On Storage mode, FormSG can handle up to Restricted.
FormSG's email mode has in-principle approval from SNDGO, the policy owner, that it can support Sensitive High data.
FormSG's storage mode has similar approval for Sensitive Normal, and is still undergoing review for Sensitive High.
There are many features of FormSG and the best way to learn about them is to log in and explore the tool. Here's a brief list of some of the features available:
- Fields: Short text, Long text, Header, Statement, Email, Number, Dropdown, Radio, Checkbox, Yes/No, Date, Rating, NRIC, Decimal
- Upload Image on the form
- Attachments to upload photos and files
- Table style questions
- Automated acknowledgement email
- Field validations
- Control flow logic / Branching
- Collaborate on a form together
- Form feedback
- Form templates/examples
- SingPass login
- MyInfo fields
- CorpPass login
Our longest forms have more than 400 questions, and more than 100 deployed forms have 100 questions and more. To make forms easier to fill, form creators used Logic/Branching to shorten their forms and only show relevant questions.
Some of our forms already have a high number of responses. In January 2020, more than a million submissions went through FormSG.
As long as you have an Internet/WOG Intranet connection you can use FormSG all around the world. Note that to log in to create forms you will also need access to your government email to retrieve the OTP.
Yes there are! Feel free to view, comment on and share these slides that is viewable on the Internet: https://go.gov.sg/formsg-sharing-slides.
The fastest way to get help is to join our Workplace@Facebook group and post a question there. Our group name is [WOG] form.gov.sg. Fellow form creators and ourselves will readily respond within hours if not minutes.
You may also consult experts in your agency, or "Agency Pros" for help via this list.
For bug reports or technical issues happening to your live form, please fill in our Support Form.