News
Charlotte Marshal, Iron Mountain: Is your signature an endangered species?
December 2014 by Charlotte Marshall, Managing Director of Iron Mountain in the UK, Ireland and Norway
In March a new exhibition opened at the US National Archives in Washington DC. On
display you could find, among other things, Adolf Hitler’s marriage certificate,
witnessed by Goebbels, a greeting card from Saddam Hussein to George Bush, and a
patent application from Michael Jackson for floor-lock shoes that allow the wearer
to lean forward without falling over. The exhibition called ’Making Their Mark’
aimed to show how the story of the world can be told through signatures.
In the months leading up to the opening, while the US archivists were busy trawling
through the millions of documents available to them, a very different look at
signatures was taking place across the Atlantic.
The European Union’s new directive on electronic identification and trust services
(eIDAS) was in the final stages of approval, with the goal of removing the final
obstacles to integrated cross-border adoption of digital identification and
transactions. By July the legislation had been approved by the European Parliament
and the Council of Ministers[i]. On October 14th it was presented to the world.
European legislation on the use of electronic signatures has been around since
1999[ii]. However, it failed to appreciate that electronic signatures don’t exist in
isolation, but as part of a transaction of some sort, and therefore require
consistent and uniform implementation in order to work.
Member states were able to interpret and apply the directive differently. This meant
that firms had to deal with a highly complex and uncertain landscape. The directive
also failed to address areas such as universal trust and authentication standards
that are essential for secure and reliable electronic transactions.
As a result, many European firms found themselves trying to transform into agile,
digital businesses while caught in a dependency on handwritten signatures.
Global information industry association AIIM recently discovered that, worldwide,
around half of organisations print documents just to get a legally enforceable
signature[iii]. In the UK, this figure rises to 84 per cent[iv], with more than a
quarter of firms (rising to 31 per cent of enterprises) adding an additional day to
a process just to allow for signature collection time.
Information management processes have been rendered chaotic. Half (49 per cent) of
the companies approached by AIIM admitted they had printed and signed documents only
to scan them back in to their DM/ECM system. A third confessed that they had run off
at least three additional copies of each document in order to collect all the
signatures required.
Anything that can remove or reduce such inefficiencies and release information
management teams to add value and insight across the business must be welcome and is
certainly long overdue.
The new regulation aims to achieve this for European firms. It establishes, among
other things, a uniform legal framework for electronic signatures, seals and time
stamps that guarantees authenticity and origin to prevent tampering, as well as
registered delivery services. These will validate the source and integrity of
electronic documents and the digital signatures they carry, paving the way for
secure and trustworthy cross-border electronic transactions, applications and the
delivery of public services.
The EU estimates that one billion advanced electronic signatures are already made
across Europe every day[v] and the new legislation is likely to accelerate this
still further.
However, being able to accommodate signed electronic documents is just part of the
story. Companies still need to address the challenge of the paper they already hold.
Not to mention all the paper that continues to arrive. Good information governance
should cover scanning, storage, security, management, access, archiving and secure
disposal.
There is one further perspective. Signatures are not just administrative, they are
symbolic. From birth and marriage certificates to Wills and Testaments, a
handwritten signature is our way of saying that something matters: I announce, I
agree, I approve, I commit.
Fortunately e-signatures and handwritten ones are not mutually exclusive. A historic
international treaty is not the same as a five-page loan application form. Some
things are just meant to be hand-signed, and preserved on paper. After all, who’d
want to visit a museum to look at an exhibition of emails?
[1]http://certifiedsignature.eu/
[1]e-signatures (Directive
1999/93/EC)<http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ...>
[1]Digital Signatures: Ready for Production, AIIM, September 2014
[1]
http://yougov.co.uk/news/2013/10/24/more-8-10-uk-companies-print-documents-just-get-th/
[1] Neelie Kroes speech press release, European Commission eIDAS regulation launch
event, 14 October, 2014
