How to use electronic and digital signatures in documents for more efficient government

It’s hard to believe that it’s been 20 years since the passage of ESIGN, and 21 years since UETA went live. Much has been achieved in terms of government streamlining its processes to best serve citizens and the mission during this time.

Yet for all that progress, governments all over the country are still trying to move to paperless solutions. At the same time, we’re dealing with a lot of employees working from home. They’re distant from each other as well as their offices. The public that they serve is also socially distancing. Enabling government to be able to digitally handle signatures on documents is all the more important now.

While many government agencies know the benefits of using digital signatures through services such as DocuSign, there are other capabilities to help governments automate their entire agreement process, from preparing documents and contracts, acting upon them and managing those agreements digitally.

This is all by way of helping governments be easier to do business with. We all have constituents within cities, counties, states. When those constituents are able to transact with governmental bodies and offices easily using streamlined processes, that reflects well on a government agency’s biggest assets—its employees.

This begins with examining and understanding the processes that constituents and employees need to complete on a day-by-day basis. These processes must be streamlined, efficient, secure, and enable those who use them to complete tasks quickly and easily.

What many government customers find is that as they look at their processes, much of it is still bound up in paper documents. Government offices around the country are full of filing cabinets. Hallways have reams of paper and more comes every day.

Constituent facing processes like licensing, DMV forms, unemployment claims, foster child placement forms, case management, housing grants, and back office processes such as finance, legal, procurement contracting, all underpin government business from start to finish.

Many of these processes have been in place for decades, unchanged and unevaluated. Yet here in the modern era, they simply can’t keep up.

Take the average process of preparing, signing and acting upon documents, and then managing them and you’ll find all the steps along the way that are manual and require data entry, other forms of communicating with other people that are just inefficient.

Electronic signatures, or e-signatures, are a key piece to the digital transformation puzzle, helping governments complete agreements at unprecedented rates.

They enable users to sign anywhere, anytime. You can sign a document electronically no matter where you are. All you need is an internet connection and access to a computer, laptop, or mobile device.

E-signatures makes it easier to get authorization from all parties. Rather than waiting on physical papers to arrive, you can electronically sign the document as soon as it hits your inbox. Your e-signature immediately triggers the next step in the process.

What’s more, automated document processes powered by e-signatures minimize the manual steps involved in signing a contract. You can rely on e-signing to execute contracts in a snap.

Signing documents electronically not only eliminates manual steps, but also saves a great deal of money. Consider both the monetary and environmental costs of paper, ink and physical transport. You can avoid all those expenses by using e-signed agreements.

Electronic signatures are logged throughout the process and can be fully archived – so you can track the process and refer back to completed transactions. In contrast to paperwork signed in print, risk in losing track of agreements that are e-signed remain minimal.

Foxit offers a number of products that help with digital signing, whether you’re on a desktop or mobile device, or using our online tool. All have integration with the DocuSign UI, as it’s built into the Foxit interface, making it easy to digitally sign documents to be legally binding. As a key part of improving government processes, consider how using digital signatures in your organization’s documents can increase your efficiency.