Digital Signatures Get the Green Light at the County of Hawai’i  

San Francisco, California, February 9, 2011

ARX (Algorithmic Research), a leading provider of digital signature solutions, has implemented the CoSign digital signature solution at the County of Hawai’i where attorneys and other personnel including investigators, legal secretaries and accountants use the solution to authorize a variety of documents electronically.

The Legal department at the County integrated CoSign digital signatures with their deployment of the Laserfiche document management solution after discovering the benefits they could obtain from going paperless with signature approvals in addition to other office procedures. These included reducing paper-related hassle associated with processing approvals, cutting process times, and enhancing collaboration within the department and also among other County departments.

“CoSign makes our processes so efficient,” explains Martha Rodillas, Private Secretary to the Corporation Counsel at County of Hawai’i. “We’re using it to sign any type of correspondence issued by our office, including legal pleadings, letters, and memos. When employees needed to take vacation or sick leave, they used to walk into my office every 30 minutes with paper documents for a wet signature approval, which could sometimes take a two-day turnaround time. With CoSign, it takes two seconds.”

The department uses CoSign’s graphical signature option to authorize documents, which in many cases are signed by multiple parties including the employee, supervisor, and department head. The documents are signed after being converted to PDF, which enables the department to easily satisfy certain requirements, such as filing legal pleadings in the US District Court in PDF format.

Now, other departments in the County of Hawai’i are seeking to embrace CoSign digital signatures. The department of Human Resources and the department of Property Management have both begun using the solution to digitally sign documents that are sent out county-wide. “Our goal is to have all the department heads throughout the County of Hawai’i get on board with CoSign,” explains Rodillas.

It is thanks to the support of the Legal department head that the department was able to embrace paperless authorization processes. “What’s available today is not in the future, it’s in the now,” explains Lincoln Ashida Corporation Counsel for County of Hawai’i. “If you’re not making it part of your work, you’re doing a disservice to the public that you serve.”