"You're not actually sending a document," Kelly said. The signors must then log onto DocuSign to access it. To initiate the signing process, an officer securely downloads the warrant document from Butte County's site and uploads it to a personal DocuSign portal where it can stay and later be referenced once the officer indicates the attorney and judge who need to sign it, he or she sends the signors an encrypted email with a link to the document. "It gives us a lot more information than just a wet signature," he said. In addition, a digital signature leaves an audit trail, Tong said, that can be traced back to the time it was signed, as well as to the account and IP machine used to sign it. The company also meets the ISO 27001 standard for information security management. However, two to three levels of authentication is likely sufficient even for the most stringent requirements, Kelly said.Īs for security, DocuSign fully encrypts the hundreds of thousands of documents signed daily on its servers and allows only originators and signors access to them. The company offers multiple levels of authentication in addition to the initial level of sending the document link to the signor's email - these include texting four-digit access codes to signors and asking them public record questions. In terms of ensuring a document is signed authentically, Kelly said: "The first question that we'll ask to kind of put it in perspective is: 'How do you know that's the case when you're using paper? 'Cause you really don't.'" Like many governments, Kelly said, Butte County at first had questions regarding the security of its documents in a digitized cloud environment, and the authenticity of the signatures on them. "Doing it through the cloud has made it a lot simpler on the IT end," Tong said. "We started out doing nighttime search warrants first and, as that became a success, we rolled that out to day time, full-time search warrants and now we've incorporated three other warrants into the process," Tong said.ĭuring Tong's original search into e-signature options, he found DocuSign's cloud solution to be a good fit for the county because of the safety of the technology and the support from DocuSign to ensure the correctness of the county's digitized forms.Īdditionally, the transition to digital signatures was eased because the county did not need to address the security of each computer since the process stays in the cloud. That has changed now that all of the county's warrants and their signature processes are digitized. For example, in the case of DUI warrants, officers who were forced to wait for a warrant approval could not get an accurate read on a suspect's alcohol levels, Tong said. In addition to the wasted work time with the paper-based process, that lost time had ramifications in terms of catching crimes while they were happening. And Butte County now signs more than 500 warrants annually. Tong estimates that the county saves three to four hours of combined officer, judge and district attorney time for each signed warrant. Search warrants can also be created by officers in the field on phones and laptops. On the receiving end, judges use iPads to look over warrant documents and electronically sign them. They don't have to sit and wait," he said. When it's signed, it comes back to them - they get an email. With e-signing in place now, the picture has changed: "They just send. "Basically lots of driving, and it was very time consuming," Tong said. That was following an initial approval by a district attorney. The county's after-hours process for approving paper-based warrants required time - officers paused their duties to get the warrants signed, and judges rose, dressed and met officers at their homes where they swore them in, read the warrants and decided whether to approve them.
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