Governments and Municipalities

Make the shift to a fully digital environment and eliminate the need for paper copies of your official documents, all while retaining a high level of legal reliability.

 
Municipalites-module

Toward a Fully Digital Municipality

To fully reap the benefits of a “paperless” organization, governments and municipalities must be able to dematerialize their official documents in a legally reliable and cost-effective manner. Your “official” documents, such as minutes, calls for tenders and decisions made by government and municipal authorities, can be digitally sealed to ensure that they have the same legal value as an original handwritten document.

 

Solutions Adapted for Municipalities

Digital signatures for individuals Digital signatures for companies Electronic signature tools Document validation tools

Digitally sign your documents in respect of your regulatory framework or your company’s requirements.

  • Online identity verification
  • Increased productivity
  • Conformity to your regulatory framework
  • Guaranteed security and reliability
  • Reduced costs
  • Smaller environmental footprint

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Digitally sign your PDF documents on behalf of your department or company.

  • Guaranteed security and reliability, Conformity to your regulatory framework, Increased productivity.

Two options:

    • Signature affixed by an individual (generally using ConsignO or Adobe products)
      Signature for departments
    • Signature automatically affixed by your systems (usually for large volumes of documents)
      Signature for organisations

Digitally prepare and sign your documents

Our range of tools makes your document preparation and signing process quick and efficient. With our easy-to-use solutions, you’ll achieve tangible gains in efficiency.

  • Guaranteed compliance
  • Increased productivity
  • Reduced costs
  • Fully digital process
  • Smaller environmental footprint

Verify the reliability of your documents

Verify a signer’s identity, as well as the integrity, authenticity and longevity of both your electronic PDF documents and printed documents.

  • Increased productivity
  • Identity validation
  • Secure processes

Significant Benefits

Increased Productivity

Simplify the document-signing process and increase your productivity.

  • Integrate multiple documents and add multiple signers to the same project to avoid the never-ending “print-sign-scan” process for each signer.
  • Have your documents signed in minutes; no more need to send your documents by mail!
  • Sign and ensure the longevity of dozens of documents within seconds.
  • Automate the document signing and validation process to make managing large volumes of documents quick and easy.

Long-term Archiving Format

Electronically archiving official documents gives you numerous benefits in terms of document lifecycle management. Our solutions ensure the longevity of your documents since converting them to the PDF/A archiving standard guarantees that they can be opened, read and authenticated for decades to come.

PDF/A-3 conformity also allows you to attach files in any format, such as supporting documents, plans, photos and video recordings, whose integrity is also protected by the digital signature.

Authenticity, Integrity and Reliability

Our digital signature confirms the signer’s identity and, when required, their professional affiliation, at the exact time of signing. Thereafter, it also ensures that the signed document is not modified or altered.

Reduced Costs and Environmental Impacts

  • Reduced document printing and handling costs
  • Elimination of shipping costs
  • Minimized archiving costs
  • Reduced environmental footprint

Municipalities are optimizing public services

"It’s been super simple. It doesn’t matter if you’re a technology wiz or not. It was very easy to implement. Signatories appreciate it because they no longer have to come into the office."
– Joanne Hyde, City Clerk

 
Questions & Answers

What is the legal value of my signed document once it is printed?

Regardless of the medium, what is most important is the preservation of information. In Quebec, according to An Act to Establish a Legal Framework for Information Technology, RSQ, c C-1.1, to argue in evidence, it must be shown that the integrity of the information has been maintained throughout its life cycle. In other words, the content of the printed version must remain identical to its original, digitally signed, electronic version to maintain its legal validity. Conversely, the same principle can be applied, for example, to the original paper version that is digitized and sent by email. The whole of the information must be preserved and we must ensure that it has not been falsified or altered by using protective measures such as a digital signature, an electronic seal, time stamping, etc. Such measures assure that any changes made to the document can be traced.

Are Notarius digital signatures recognized worldwide?

Notarius digital signatures are used to sign official documents and meet the standards of many countries. However, each jurisdiction may have specific requirements that must be met in order to be recognized. For example, in France, many agencies will only recognize French certificate authorities. In the United States, requirements for authenticating engineering documents will mostly be limited to a technological baseline, but not specific to a provider or a standard. As such, Notarius digital signatures meet or exceed the minimum requirements for all US states (except Hawaii). It is important to verify local digital signature requirements with recipients prior to submitting signed documents that use Notarius digital signatures.

Of course, other considerations need to be evaluated before making a digital shift. Please feel free to reach out to Notarius for a working session on the subject for further discussion

Why are Notarius digital signatures trusted and recognized by government agencies?

Not all digital signatures are issued and controlled in the same manner. Governments tend to limit the number of certificate authorities they will recognize or authorize. Strict guidelines are established and audited to ensure that the approved digital signature certificate authority has the proper technology, security, policy and process in place to guarantee the identity of all digital signatures issued. Notarius was created in the 1990s by Quebec’s Chambre des notaires (Board of Notaries) to build a government-grade certificate authority recognized by the Government of Quebec’s electronic land titles registry. Even today, very few third-party certificate authorities are authorized to issue trusted digital signatures for interaction with government agencies. Notarius is the only third-party certificate authority recognized by multiple provincial governments in Canada.

How are digital signatures secure? Can they be hacked?

Digital signatures are based on cryptography that was originally designed in the 1970s and is still considered the standard to secure different types of data. Digital signatures and their cryptographic derivatives are used in our daily lives to secure websites, communications, documents and financial transactions. If digital signatures were “hacked,” the first case of attack would likely be in the financial, military or government sector. An individual’s signed PDF document would be the least of a signer’s worries.

What happens when I print an “original” PDF copy?

The printed version is a copy— nothing more, nothing less. You can produce one or two original copies of the electronic document and make multiple subsequent copies of it. It is the same as scanning a paper document into PDF format: the PDF is simply a copy. The ability to produce an original document and make copies is what is essential. A digital signature allows you to produce an original document in electronic format.

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