ACRA A badly designed and confusing website
ACRA has a badly designed and confusing website.

They have hundreds of forms which are organized in a hierarchy. To get the right form, the user needs to know the hierarchy and to navigate through many layers of the form. 

ACRA probably thinks that this is a good method of organization. They are mistaken.

An easier method is to allow the user to use a word search, e.g. "reduction of share capital". This should give a link to the right form.

Many users had probably encountered this difficulty before. To help them, ACRA prepares a detailed FAQ to explain to them how to get to the right form. The trouble is that the FAQ takes a few pages and can be misleading, as it could be browser dependent.

It is also troublesome to navigate through this website and refer to the FAQ at the same time. Some experienced user probably have to flip from one tap to another. Others may have to print out the FAQ for reference.

When it comes to the actual form to fill, ACRA also prepares a detailed guide in a FAQ. There is a statement the form will take a few minutes to fill up. What ACRA clearly did not count is the time taken to read the FAQ guide. It usually comes in several pages and may take several tens of minutes to go through it.

Sometimes, he FAQ guide is confusing. Again, the actual user experience could depend on the type of browser that he is using. Also, the ACRA website could respond in an unpredictable manner, leading to more wasted time.

I have encountered this problem with the ACRA website over the past ten years. I have given countless feedback to them. They promised to improve, but nothing was done. They kept the same architecture to their website. 

I an now used to many government agencies, not just ACRA, that give a lot of trouble to the public in conforming to their online processes. They try to save some time for their staff, but they add more trouble to the public. I suspect that for every 1 hour saved of the staff, the public probably has to spend 5 hours.

Alternatively the public has to pay a big fee to a secretarial firm to file the returns. This process adds to the cost of doing business, although it does generate GDP in giving revenue to the secretarial firm.

When will this government realize that their processes need to be simplified and help to reduce the cost of going business?

Tan Kin Lian

 

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