IMO integrating this into a system that already knows these things about a user would be super powerful.
Obviously you can start with the most basic things like name, address, birthdate, etc, but to the extent that you can capture data every time a user fills out a form it becomes akin to a field linking problem that you can generalize across users.
Obviously the privacy folks here will hate this idea, but a system that could fill out forms for you because it already knows most of the structured data about you would be amazing.
It would be useful more as a tool to help migrate away from e-paper workflows, i.e. emailing PDF scans of legacy paper forms, and towards smarter architectures.
For example: suppose a customer with a workflow where the customer fills out a PDF form and emails the completed PDF to an externality (e.g. supplier, other department whose workflow they can't control, etc.). So you build a modern UX that uses the PDF API to fill out the PDF with the data from the UI, and then email the PDF to the externality, just like before, so that they're on-board with the new UX (since it doesn't affect them at all).
Once you build the new UX, you can then sit with your externality and figure out what they need in order to hook into the modern system. After all, they benefit from a single queryable source of truth, just like anybody else, and the customer is generating that source of truth when they put their info into the UI which ultimately emails the PDF. Once you build the UX for the externality, there's no need to retrain your original customers - they can keep using the modern UX you built for them before. All you have to do is update internally to make sure you're updating the sources the externality's UX expects, stop using the PDF API and emailing the results, and your migration is finished in a pretty simple way that is transparent to the customer.
I think there are much greater business opportunities beyond immigration.
I mean, please do it for immigration, that's a good deed.
But I think the money is in using this technology in order to build “fill-in wizards" for businesses, especially law firms and other "conservative", paper-driven industries.
If this is done without an API, I feel like this is worse, because now everyone is locked into using a specific web app which has no real incentive to improve. At least everyone can generate PDFs.
Obviously you can start with the most basic things like name, address, birthdate, etc, but to the extent that you can capture data every time a user fills out a form it becomes akin to a field linking problem that you can generalize across users.
Obviously the privacy folks here will hate this idea, but a system that could fill out forms for you because it already knows most of the structured data about you would be amazing.