The Sacramento City Council is scheduled this evening, Tuesday, Oct. 20, to consider a new city ordinance that would “enable the city to use electronic records, electronic signatures, and digital signatures to the fullest extent allowed by law.”
The ordinance would align the city’s definition of electronic record, electronic signature and digital signature to California’s government and civil codes. According to a city council report, the ordinance adding language to the Sacramento City Code is needed before a proposed digital signature application moves forward.
In March, the City Council approved a $1.5 million budget to fund Sacramento’s new Automated Bids, Contracts, and Digital Signatures (ABCD) Program charter.
“The City currently uses digital posting for its invitations for bid (IFB), requests for information (RFI), requests for qualifications (RFQ) and requests for proposals (RFP). This program is committed to examining the entire procurement/contract process beginning with solicitation, through the management of the contract life cycle, ending with archiving the final contract in the Citywide Content Management (CCM) repository,” the charter says.
Sacramento has contracted with Silanis Technology’s eSignLive software as part of its digital signature project.
City officials envision using digital signatures used well beyond public contracting.
“Along with City contract execution, incorporating digital signatures into other citywide processes will be beneficial by increasing the efficiency of service delivery. Using digital signatures for building permitting, plan approvals, City code exemptions and home occupancy permits will be more effective and provide a better customer experience. Digitally signing human resource documents and finance documents, in addition to contracts, will improve efficiency as well as provide better management of records. It is likely that other citywide business processes will be candidates for the use of digital signatures as well,:” a city council report for the Oct. 20 meeting said.
To comply with state statute, Sacramento must use public key cryptography or signature dynamics technology for digital signatures.
