Permits, procurement contracts, interagency agreements, and grant documents — collected electronically with OTP identity verification, a PKCS#7 digital seal, and a hash-chained audit trail that supports records management requirements.
Applicants sign permit applications electronically — no printing, no in-person visits. OTP verification provides the identity assurance required for government-facing workflows.
Memoranda of understanding, data sharing agreements, and intergovernmental contracts. Sequential routing and multiple authorized signatory support.
Supplier onboarding documents, purchase agreements, and service contracts. Reusable templates handle repeated contract types across procurement cycles.
Grant award letters, recipient agreements, and reporting acknowledgments. Hash-chained audit trail supports grant audit requirements.
Employee onboarding, position agreements, and acknowledgment of policy documents for government employees. Signed copies are auto-retained.
Formal feedback submissions, consultation responses, and public record certifications where signed, identifiable acknowledgment is required.
The Government Paperwork Elimination Act (GPEA, 1998) preceded ESIGN and specifically required federal agencies to allow electronic submission and signature of forms. ESIGN (2000) reinforced federal recognition of electronic signatures for both government and private transactions.
State agency transactions fall under UETA (adopted by 49 states). Many state procurement, permitting, and HR systems now accept electronic signatures under UETA when both parties have agreed to electronic transactions.
Federal government departments subject to PIPEDA recognize electronic signatures under Schedule 2 of the Act. Provincial governments are subject to provincial privacy and e-commerce acts (Ontario, BC, Alberta, etc.) which carry equivalent recognition.
Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat guidance on electronic signatures recognizes e-signatures for most internal government transactions and contracts. Level of assurance requirements depend on the document's sensitivity and legal context.
Yes, for many government document types. In the US, the ESIGN Act and GPEA authorize electronic signatures for federal transactions. State agencies operate under UETA. In Canada, PIPEDA and provincial e-commerce acts recognize e-signatures for government contracts and administrative documents. However, some government documents remain excluded — court filings, vital records, documents requiring notarization, and specific instruments that statutes require to be on paper. Check your agency's specific requirements and consult qualified legal counsel.
GetSigned provides email or SMS one-time passcode (OTP) verification before a signer can access and sign a document. OTP is typically classified as Level of Assurance 2 (NIST SP 800-63) — appropriate for medium-risk transactions. For high-assurance government transactions requiring credential-based identity (e.g., PIV/CAC in the US), GetSigned's OTP assurance level may not be sufficient. Consult your agency's FISMA and identity management requirements.
Retention periods are configurable per tenant — you set the period to match your agency's records management schedule (NARA, provincial archives, or department-specific schedules). On retention expiry, the PDF is purged but the audit trail tombstone — hashes and event metadata — is retained permanently. This allows authenticity verification after the file is purged. The hash-chained audit log is append-only at the database grant level, which supports records management audit requirements.
Yes. GetSigned is a B2B API service — software vendors building government-facing document management, permitting, or procurement platforms can integrate GetSigned as their e-signature layer. The vendor's application is the "application" tenant; individual agencies are sub-tenants. Each agency's documents are fully isolated from other agencies' data. The vendor is responsible for ensuring the overall solution meets the specific agency's security and compliance requirements.
GetSigned's audit trail captures: signer identity verification event, explicit e-sign consent click (logged with timestamp + IP + user agent), document view event, signature event, and sealing event with document hashes. All events are in an append-only, hash-chained log — revoke UPDATE/DELETE grants at the DB level make the log tamper-resistant. The complete audit log is embedded as a certificate page in the sealed PDF, so it travels with the document for record-keeping purposes.
Government e-signature requirements vary by jurisdiction, agency, document type, and risk classification. This page is for informational purposes only. Consult your agency legal counsel and applicable records management authorities before deploying e-signatures in a government context.
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