Somebody pointed out to me that the state of Minnesota has guidelines/considerations for deploying electronic signatures, Electronic Records Management Guidelines – Electronic and Digital Signatures. I may add this to my sidebar. Much of this is discussed on other pages or posts on this blog.
Utah, Washington, Oregon, North Carolina, California, Nebraska and Texas have all adopted electronic record and signature guidelines where they have chosen to license or register certificate authorities to do business with the state. In many cases they have updated laws that specifically required handwritten signatures as a response to their states ratification of UETA.
I am not sure how well they deal with the distribution aspect of issuing credentials, this has proven to be a challenge for the federal government as well when trying to deploy credentials for FDA and other governmental applications. In fact, FDA regulation 21 CFR Part 11 on Electronic Signatures and Records, approved in 1997, is still not being enforced and when enforcement commences it is likely to be relatively lax.
As I have stated on other postings and papers this is still the crux of the problem. This has led governments to adopt an ad-hoc array of electronic signature methodologies with some success but has thwarted ubiquitous adoption of electronic signatures government. If people have any updates or success stories in this area I would love to hear them.
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Well, I wouldn’t look to government to lead in any of these areas. Heck, I was just told that medical records in many hospitals/clinics are on paper because going electronic is too expensive.
Somehow they missed the fact that electronic records via computers has been the major force in reducing costs and improving efficiency at just about every business in the world over the past 50 years.
If we just had one more regulation….
Interesting article in September’s Atlantic monthly speaks directly to this issue. David Goldhill discusses how health care is the only industry where technology has increased costs rather than reduced them and has some interesting insights into why, and how government unwittingly created this system 50 years ago.
So we probably do need government to lead real reform efforts to get this sort of change. Then we can sell doctors and hospitals on the benefits of going paperless!