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SA's electronic signature use gathers pace

Admire Moyo
By Admire Moyo, ITWeb's news editor.
Johannesburg, 04 May 2015
If poorly managed, signature-dependent documents can wreak havoc, says Avi Rose, SA regional business manager at ARX.
If poorly managed, signature-dependent documents can wreak havoc, says Avi Rose, SA regional business manager at ARX.

Government and financial institutions are driving widespread acceptance of digital signing processes in SA.

So says Avi Rose, SA regional business manager at ARX, who notes the Department of Trade and Industry, the South African Post Office, Public Service Commission, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Deloitte, and Glencore are among the organisations promoting electronic signature use.

With the introduction of the Electronic Communications and Transactions (ECT) Act 25 of 2002, SA followed a global trend to recognise the legality of electronic signatures. The ECT Act recognises data as the functional equivalent of writing, or evidence in writing, by guaranteeing data messages the same legal validity as messages written on paper.

Mark Heyink, a local legal expert, says as the world moves at an accelerated pace in its embrace of information and communication technologies, the importance of signatures will not diminish, but will inevitably change.

The sooner organisations understand and begin to use signatures correctly, the more likely they will unlock the many benefits that ICTs bring, he adds.

Terrance Booysen, CEO of the CGF Research Institute, notes electronic signatures may be validly used in many types of transactions and contracts and their use is subject to certain exceptions.

For example, he explains, agreements for the sale of immovable property and wills may not generally be signed electronically.

"That said, electronic signatures are a valid and legally enforceable method of signing documentation in many countries, including South Africa. However, certain requirements must be met before an electronic signature will be deemed to be valid."

While the legal definitions of electronic, digital and advanced electronic signatures may vary between various legal jurisdictions, including the international conventions, it goes without saying that organisations need to be up-to-date with these variances and extremely vigilant in order to determine the validity of a person's so-called 'authority' which underpins electronic documentation," Booysen points out.

According to Rose, within business, the volume and velocity at which content is generated can be terrifying, but few categories of content are as important as those documents requiring a signature.

"If poorly managed, signature-dependent documents can wreak havoc with content management systems and business processes, impacting operations, organisational efficiency and client relationships, as well as becoming a potential security risk. Electronic signature solutions are emerging as an effective remedy," Rose says.

He reveals that although digital signature systems have been in use since the late 1990s, recent advances have made them more attractive to a wider audience. These include a bigger focus on features that help improve document security and meet governance requirements, as well as on ease of implementation and use.

Electronic signatures are also getting more flexibility, enabling 'plug and play' convenience, as well as application program interfaces that allow easy integration into proprietary systems, he concludes.

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