Unlock the Digital Signature Legality for Government in Canada with airSlate SignNow

How to eSign a document: digital signature legality for Government in Canada

eIDAS digital signature digitisation has been in  the hotbed i guess for many years if not the last   couple of decades i mean there's been plenty  of national or regional and even enterprise   smart card schemes i think Europe was very  very mature in terms of its adoption and use of   PKI and smart cards ahead of the United  States and they they went down the   PIV road much much later than Europe adopted  smart cards as it were and those smart cards   have been in the forms of you know an enterprise  ID you know getting into an office or some form of   national ID because different geographies still  had papers and they're completely impractical   they disintegrate so switching to a card was  more convenient and that brought with it or   as part of those programs you had some form of  digitisation initiative of a government portal   or something that provided citizens that means to  use it so in Europe i think that a greater degree   was taught good adoption and we are still  seeing people adopting and wanting to use   trust service providers for remote signatures or  indeed local signatures on documents and workflow   any new national identity program i've seen i  guess of the last five years maybe slightly longer   has been the renewal of such programs  where you've seen a traditional   polycarbonate card in someone's wallet or purse  but where these have turned over and people have   started to renew contracts or look at extended  use cases they're actually now making provisions   for not just the physical smart card with its  keys and certificates for local authorisation   authentication or signature but they're also  writing into their requirements we want to use   remote authorised digital signatures so that plays  really nicely into a lot of the European and eIDAS   requirements around proving your ownership of  your private key when you're performing a signing   operation as an example and making sure there's  some form of cloud provision for whatever service   that you're you're looking to deliver as  part of that project if you step outside of   Europe i guess Middle East, North Africa, South  Africa, these these regions are looking to adopt   similar technologies but they're looking to the  European union and the eIDAS requirements because   it provides a nice framework that's already  mature it's well adopted lots of technology or   a reasonable amount of technology is already out  there providing for that as well as different   providers so you know typically in the absence of  a standard in a particular geography a standard   from another geography is adopted so eIDAS is  a nice convenient framework that everybody is   looking toward stereotypically government schemes  do take an awfully long time to get going gain   traction i mean i've worked extensively in UK and  overseas governments where procurement cycles take   absolutely forever and that's born of certain  levels of bureaucracy peering or making sure   that the process is fair etc but when you look  at i guess in any walk of life you've got the   need to do something the requirements and then the  adoption and rollout and so procuring and putting   a particular technology in place is the shortest  part of the process getting your users to adopt   and use that technology successfully is probably  the bigger challenge and if you look at i guess an   enterprise you've got a fixed number of people you  know ten thousand twenty one one hundred thousand   and you may have an HR mandate to say old all  employees must perform security awareness training   by a particular date and you can enforce that by  penalising people but in the citizen world that's   that's harder to do unless there's a deadline  i know UK HMRC (online income tax system) and   performing self-assessment for a small subset  of people is the only way of enforcing that   people perform an interaction with government  electronically by a particular date in time   and the only way they're able to do that is  because we're going to fine you £100 pounds   if you don't do this by the 31st of January.  Outside of that there isn't massive massive   incentive unless it's hugely increase my benefit  in consuming whatever resource exponentially   and that therein lies the challenge if you're  rolling out something as a government how can you   ensure that all citizens are going to use it by  a particular date you may have a 10-year program   and if i'm going to interact with that service two  maybe three times in the lifetime of the program   so it makes it really difficult to mandate the  use of it unless it's super super convenient and   everyone's going to rush towards using it even  today when you i guess consider online banking   online government portals and you know if you're  able to gain access to the statistics for adoption   we all know that not everybody uses online  banking it's been a huge convenience to those   who use it you know i'm using it on my phone  lots of financial institutions are now retiring   their web portal in favour of mobile apps but  you've still got a subset of users a certain   demographic that will not and cannot use it  they have to go to a branch and you know the   death of the high street is probably very a very  strong term that people banter around but you see   branches for banks disappearing that's going to  really really impact those that aren't able to   access the online channel as convenient as the  online channel is for you and i the the maturity   of technology is probably one of the factors that  impedes people from using a service as convenient   as using your mobile phone is you do see in the  media lots of exploits hackers phishing attacks   is this genuine is it really secure so you've got  this this perception thing to break through and   that's that's the same for any adopting emerging  technology you've got your naysayers your early   adopters and those that are just you know gonna  use it in full course you know getting someone   who's 70 who's got arthritis in their hands to  be able to use touch id reliably was just so hit   and miss so as convenient and easy to use as the  technology is it's still got a bit of a way to go   to be truly accessible by all in order for those  online services to be adopted so in the interim   or in the short term you're still going to have  a need to use traditional telephone banking or   a face-to-face interaction if you're going  to go and pay your council tax people will   i mean the pandemic has certainly sped along  people's digitization of a process and i think   because of the way people are now seeing  face-to-face interactions quite negatively   it's helping people to say actually i'm not  going to go into a physical building because of   the distancing and the risk i'm going to make  a telephone call so that's you know those that   would traditionally have gone into somewhere are  now on the phone so and it's taken best part of a   decade if not longer for people to make that step  so yeah i think technology probably needs to move   a little bit in order to accommodate some of them  but you're in the short term you're never going to   abolish the that physical interaction i mean look  at cash cash has waned somewhat recently the use   of cash dispensers atms they're disappearing but  you've still got those that they don't trust the   banks the money's in the mattress the reason  the uk doesn't have a national identity card   is because of the large percentage of the citizens  don't trust the uk government to handle their data   and so you need systems that are firstly really  easy convenient to use they need to be very very   secure and they need to provide the users of the  system's assurance that the people on the back end   don't have any back doors to subvert the data  they're putting into the system change it   and access it and the same for an an  attacker you know there's been lots of   hype in media over the years where i guess in  the us rightly or wrongly the fbi and whomever   need to get access to a phone that is going to  support investigations into terrorist activities   and apple have been blasted for not providing  the back door actually well those safeguards are   there to protect you and i as citizens not  to give government agencies access to data   so you kind of need that assurance and trust that  yes i'm interacting with a financial institution   or a government organization the technology is  secure because it's provided by Ascertia it's got   these safeguards in place it's cryptographically  impenetrable and there's no backdoors to allow an   administrator or a third-party attacker to gain  access to it but it does all come down to trust   you know i guess the banks and and government  you know hmrc sees us every year the telephone   phishing attacks uh the email phishing attacks oh  i'm an officer investigating your tax records can   i have your details to to investigate you know  that that kind of thing undermines all of the   trust i guess the promotion of these services  so it does become very difficult but yeah you're   right trust is where this all comes down to  there's lots of interesting projects that are   underway and different countries are at different  points in their level of maturity when it comes to   adopting digitisation so as i mentioned earlier  you've got those that have gone hell for leather   in being right at the leading edge of the curve  we're adopting digital for all of their government   initiatives and those that are lagging behind the  uk was relatively mature we don't have a national   identity card that would provide high levels of  convenience in the current pandemic in identifying   those that had been issued the coronavirus a  national id would be really really convenient   for those to perform some form of digital or  electronic check there but that's not the case   versus there's a country that has gone all  digital i mean Sweden is pretty mature with their   digitised schemes and then you sort of take a  step to those that are looking way into the future   Australia and New Zealand are looking to pilot  schemes to digitise uh the passport there's   initiatives within iko working groups to be able  to create a digitised machine readable travel   document on your phone in the secure enclave so  you've got all the security you need around it um   to be able to digitise that because it sounds  silly but when you leave to go to work or you   need to go to the airport you make sure you've  got your wallet your phone and your keys and if   you're absent-minded that passport isn't on that  list in the same way that your id card for the   office nine times out ten you could forget about  so if you've got the travel document on your phone   you've paid more attention to having that you're  going to be able to traverse a border so it's it's   looking at initiatives where people are being  truly innovative with identity and a use case   remote authorised signing is a really good example  and it's being rolled out as i said all the way   across the European Union and outside of Europe  people are looking to adopt those technologies   to be able to bring them into their country and  integrate them with blockchain integrate them   with more of the emerging technologies and  be really really innovative so i think it is   a case of some of these technologies of reaching  critical mass some are being pulled into existing   projects and some countries are looking at really  new innovative ways of using digitisation to   change an existing process i think a point more  to the digitisation of a passport in that respect. you