Transformational Government

Regulation Interaction & Transactions

{mosimage}To transform services to the citizen public sector organisations need to deal with regulatory and statutory transactions, these involve the issuing, recording or renewing of authorisation, permission, or certification of or for an event or service with a legal, statutory or regulatory requirement, for example issuing a gaming licence.

Examples of proof:

• An electronic version of a licence that can be e-mailed out
• Ability to review certification on-line
• Licence produced there and then and handed to the citizen

The most cost effective way to enable this interaction is to produce electronic versions of the required regulatory documents that can be e-mailed out to the citizen or business.

Any regulatory document such as licence that is e-mailed out, or that can be down loaded from a web site needs to be issued in such a way that the licence can not be altered or tampered with after it is issued.

This can be achieved by producing the licence electronically from the appropriate licensing system. The licence is then signed by hand by the authorised officer (Licensing Officer etc.) and it is then scanned to a pdf. The pdf is then password protected and a digital signature applied to it to prevent the document from being altered. The licence in pdf format can then be safely e-mailed out. If the document is altered after transmission then it will become invalid.

Digital signatures are now legally admissable in the United Kingdom and therefore it is not really necessary to sign the licence by hand before converting it to pdf. The licence could be printed straight to pdf format and then signed with the authorised officer's digital signature.

To enable this solution of copy of Adobe® Acrobat® standard version 6.0 or above is required with which to generate the pdf and sign the document. An appropriate digital signature is also required with which to sign the document. The digital signature needs to be issued in the name of the officer who is authorised to sign the licence or regulatory document.

The process of signing a pdf with a digital signature is known as Adobe Certified Document Services. At present the only digital certificates recognised by Acrobat® are those issued by GeoTrust and known as My Credential™ for Adobe® Acrobat®. The digital signatures are supplied on a password protected secure FIPS 140-1 USB key to prevent unauthorised users from using them.

More information...