Lawmakers push for electronic signature use

Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.) represents Silicon Valley, that fabled land of great wealth, gridlocked traffic and our national future that stretches from Palo Alto to South San Jose.

Rep. W.J. "Billy" Tauzin (R-La.) is chairman of the House Commerce Subcommittee on Telecommunications, Trade and Consumer Protection.

Eshoo and Tauzin have introduced a bill, HR 2991, to require federal agencies to make their forms available to the public online and, more importantly, to have the capacity to receive filled-out forms electronically that bear digital signatures.

Dubbed the Electronic Commerce Enhancement Act, the bill makes policy sense but raises important technical and legal issues. The bill was referred to both the Commerce Committee, on which Eshoo and Tauzin serve, and the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee. A Senate version will be referred to a single committee, probably Governmental Affairs. The bill is technologically neutral.

Authenticating signatures is one critical issue. United States criminal law punishes anyone who submits false information to the government, whether in the course of paying taxes or getting financial benefits such as Social Security payments. For centuries, government systems have depended on individuals' signatures to authenticate documents. Even today, experts testify in court whether a sample and a signature were penned by the same person.

The government is so dependent on signatures that even when a taxpayer files a tax return electronically, IRS requires the filer to mail in a handwritten signature form. Although the National Commission on Restructuring IRS recommended doing away with the requirement--and IRS has stated it wants to do away with the paper--IRS is grappling with how to do so.

The Justice Department will also be an important player in the digital signature debate because it uses signatures to prosecute. It will be wary of anything prosecutors perceive as threatening to that capability.

Authentication is an important requirement in many situations. For example, how does an agency such as the Social Security Administration decide that a person calling in is really who he or she claims to be? Some 50 programs in 37 agencies have already discussed receiving forms digitally.