About Clerk ePass

Electronic commerce has created the potential for converting conventional buying into a web-based electronic buying process. The cashier's counter has been changed into an electronic shopping cart and electronic payment system. However, there are situations where the payment is for other than goods, e.g., for the filing, recordation permitting, registration or the like of certain types of documents. In such cases, the cashier's counter serves more than simply to link payment to the contents of a virtual shopping cart. The content of the documents involved may have an impact on the completion of the transaction in a certain fashion, e.g., local; state and federal laws and/or rules associated with the proper completion of the document. These transactions also require a means of authenticating the filer's identity as well as authenticating the person who is accepting or denying the application on behalf of agency responsible for accepting or denying the application.

The successful delivery of electronic services is a primary objective of modern e-government and their successful introduction depends on the users trusting these services and the privacy of their personal data. Digital signatures are one of the security elements that make these services possible, but they feature some weaknesses - weaknesses that can be surmounted by the use of a digital time stamp. These do not only add a certified time to the data but also make many of other methods that increase security and trust possible. Since digital certificates are widely used in today's information society, digital signatures should be easy to implement. However, implementation must be studied carefully because abuse can have critical repercussions. Without 100 percent trust from its users, e-government and its services will be unsustainable. Slovenian e-government is in this situation, stranded with good infrastructure and legal bases, but services that are not trusted.

Certain transactions requiring privacy and accountability related to healthcare and financial information require recordation using stamps as well as informing both parties and authenticating each party. Also transactions requiring transfer of confidential and government authorized documents from a government agency requiring seal of the city, county, state or federal official along with the signature of the official to another department that needs to verify the authenticity of document as well as sender. Clerk ePass provides a way to accomplish these transactions electronically utilizing Web-based remote access technologies or a fax machine and to record, permanently memorialize, and communicate the results of the prospective transaction, i.e., was it completed or unsuccessful. In these transactions Signatures of the filer as well as other authorities is used to authenticate the filer and the associated authorities. Hence there exists a need to accomplish these tasks using a digital certificate that can authenticate all the parties as well as encrypt the document in a secure format so that the document can not be altered and can be used as legally binding and stored for future in a form that does not allow any modifications.

Providing Digital Certificate without authenticating the user using a chain of trust can encourage identity theft. Also providing Digital Certificate to each user can be expensive and hence there is a need for server based digital certificates that can be used to encrypt documents and also authenticate the filer who is issued a login/password after establishing a chain of trust.

Also the retrieval of these documents by decrypting the document should be allowed only after identifying that the person wishing to view these documents is authorized to view the document. Such decryption can only be done by the private key associated with the authorized person that is available using digital certificate stored along with the document in the archival digital repository.

Accounting for lost digital certificates using a Certificate Revocation List (CRL) can be a complex process. There is a need for avoiding Certificate Revocation List by issuing a onetime digital certificate and storing the information associated with the entity that was issued the certificate, unique document identifier, date of issuance etc. along with the encrypted document in an Archival Digital Repository. Clerk ePass allows retrieval of a digitally signed document in an emergency situation, in paper form using a fax machine or a printer that can be authenticated using the fax number or IP address that is pre registered and by faxing or printing to the fax machine or printer without any operator intervention to avoid any alteration of the document during the retrieval/printing process.