Frequently Asked Questions

CiviForm is an open source project that is collectively developed and maintained by the governments that use it, with additional support from Google.org and Exygy. Read about CiviForm’s governance structure to learn more about how governments work together to make decisions and shape the project.

CiviForm’s software is free and open source; however, setting up CiviForm in your community requires a significant organizational investment in civic service design to ensure programs and residents have a good experience, and operating CiviForm requires ongoing staff time to manage questions and application forms. Additionally, there are infrastructure costs associated with hosting CiviForm using in-house resources or a third party.

Residents across the State of Arkansas, in the City of Seattle, Washington as well as the City of Bloomington, Indiana are already benefiting from easier access to government services. Charlotte, North Carolina is conducting a pilot and Miami-Dade County, Florida is starting development. We look forward to more governments joining the software collaborative later this year.

Adopting CiviForm requires working closely with program administrators, IT teams, and other stakeholders to successfully understand and meet the needs of programs and residents. See "Get Started" for an overview. If you want more detail, visit the "Implementation Guide" for a detailed look at the process.

Direct interested colleagues to this website (civiform.us), our documentation (docs.civiform.us), our Product Overview, or our one-page flyer (PDF). You can also get in touch to meet with the team and learn more.

CiviForm is open source software that can be deployed and self-hosted on each government’s own cloud or on-premises infrastructure. Existing IT staff with knowledge of cloud or on-premises systems can set up and manage CiviForm with minimal effort. Once CiviForm is deployed, non-technical users can manage programs and questions through a user-friendly interface. Read more about infrastructure requirements and staffing needs.

Because CiviForm’s underlying infrastructure is self-hosted by each government, all applicant information is stored and managed by each government in accordance with their security and privacy policies. Read more about security and privacy considerations in CiviForm.

CiviForm is built as a government software collaborative, which provides a way of co-developing and maintaining shared government software that reduces long-term maintenance costs and makes it easier to adapt to the changing needs of programs and communities. CiviForm’s open source approach is grounded in principles of transparency, community ownership, and community-driven development. Member organizations contribute to CiviForm’s shared codebase through collective planning and decision-making processes (read about CiviForm’s governance processes here).

Yes. Open source software is widely used across critical web infrastructure, including by secure government services such as Login.gov. CiviForm’s maintainers regularly update software dependencies and publish a new release each week. CiviForm’s approach to open source software development is inspired by best practices from technical government organizations such as 18F.