Now that Congress has passed legislation that will push agencies to the brink of the much-envisioned paperless government, federal users are focusing as never before on digital signature technology - a method of authenticating the identity of a person who has "signed" an electronic document and of ensuring that the contents of the document were not altered during transmission.
The law will require agencies to provide electronic forms to citizens, who will use emerging digital signature technology to securely submit the forms back to agencies. Agencies still need to re-engineer many business processes and settle pesky policy questions before diving into these new activities. But the market for technology to support those activities is exploding as vendors race for a share of the potentially massive amount of business in the federal arena, in which agencies accept 23 billion responses to 6,000 different forms every year.
Brian O'Higgins, executive vice president and chief technology officer of Richardson, Texas-based Entrust Technologies Inc., said the new legislation should create a massive federal market for products supporting the federal public-key infrastructure (PKI), which is a framework of laws and procedures addressing the use of digital signatures.
"It's going to be the killer application for PKI," O'Higgins said. "When there is some edict that says, 'Save paper,' that will drive huge applications."
But O'Higgins and others noted that potential pitfalls to smooth and quick adoption of digital signatures could delay progress. Some observers said the government lacks the resources to fully meet the requirements of the law, while others noted interoperability deficiencies in existing products.
Eliminating Paper
Squeezed into the omnibus budget bill, the Government Paperwork Elimination Act charges the Office of Management and Budget with crafting guidelines to help agencies develop electronic versions of forms and accept "electronic signatures" on tax documents and other forms requiring a signature.
Richard Guida, champion for security on the Government Information Technology Services Board and chairman of the Federal PKI Steering Committee, is working on these guidelines for agencies, which are due in about a year.
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