E-Lock bets big on digital signature

E-Lock bets big on digital signature

With various government departments opening up for digital signatures

Pratima Harigunani

Monday, March 24, 2008

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PUNE, INDIA: Digital signature company E-Lock is probably not wrong when it reckons that the government sector is a very attractive growth segment.

If it is able to crack through the discussion and pilot stage, government functions like pension, land records and STPI would be the ones to follow the recent introduction of e-signatures in the TDS function.

Aniruddha Shrotri, CTO and co-founder, E-lock says, "In the case of pension department, it is not only the sheer scale of data management but also secure entry of data that calls for digital signatures. There is also a pan-STPI proposal in which work on some prototypes is underway, the state of actual deployment can't be commented upon though. Government functions are apt areas of application of e-signatures as data filled and submitted should also be encrypted."

E-lock, for now, has gone into detailed discussions and prototypes particularly in the area of land records after a presentation to the commissioner of land records.

This would entail a transition from archaic thumbprints to digital signatures, which would help in tracking of legitimate changes, ownership details and also loans against land.

"Loans easily take months when the farmer goes through the lengthy process with physically signed certificates and consequent bank authorization. Now the bank would be able to readily see the digitally signed documents in the central database and give immediate sanction, if this application goes through" he explains.

Maharashtra and Karnataka are the two states that the company intends to start with.

"Once it works in one state, other would follow suit." Earlier, DGFT or Directorate General of Foreign Trade has applied digital signatures through SafeScrypt. There is scope of e-signatures in everything from STPIs to property registrations to stamp duty registrations, feels Shrotri.

The company has experimented with verticalization in the e-signature area recently with Insta TDS application.

"Companies normally have to manage piles of Form no 16 documents more so when they have to get authorized physical signatures on hordes of forms and then distribute them physically. It is a total waste of time and effort. E-signatures on soft copies of form 16 helps in easing the signing and employee distribution process," he says.

There was not much deployment in government till two to three years back, he says. The many departments that have started taking interest here is as part of the e-governance initiative.

After NIC became a nodal agency, the government departments have started trying digital signatures in areas like tenders, data, e-procurement and many other applications. It has also been used in a big way to enforce non-repudiation, he adds.

Among other major government departments that have embraced this concept is the DGSD or Directorate General of Supplies and Disposal that has considered digital signatures for better transparency and is expectedly going to formally complete the online rollout soon.

Other departments include, IFFCO, some areas of customs and excise-related data, oil companies and those data where citizens interact with the government.

What initially was at a slower pace is now picking up fast and wide, he says.

Apart from government, the company would be looking at M-commerce for expansion and prototypes are already initiated.

Shrotri rates the Indian laws as fairly good in defining the purview of e-signatures.

"Starting with crucial and critical things, this will result in process efficiencies. Introducing these signatures in the ROC scope has helped companies file their documents in electronic forms."

The Indian IT Act has accorded the same legality to digital signatures as the ones on papers, which has jacked up the content security market significantly. However digital signatures completely replacing their traditional siblings is still a far cry, he says.

"There are issues like cost of PC access, cost of Internet access and digital signature process per se."

E-Lock provides desktop as well as web-based digital signature products that aid in the signing of electronic documents, forms and transactions. It has been serving markets like the US, UK, Australia, Portugal and Chile and is aggressively looking at Europe.

©CyberMedia News

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