Digital Signatures Get the Vote at Christchurch City Council

With the CoSign® digital signature solution, the City Council of Christchurch, New Zealand obtains organisation-wide consents faster.

Auckland, New Zealand April 12, 2010 – TME Digital Signatures the ARX partner in Australia / New Zealand and ARX, Inc., a leading provider of digital signature solutions, have implemented the CoSign digital signature solution at Christchurch City Council. With the new signing solution, the Council has realised faster approval processing times and simpler, more efficient archiving capabilities.

CoSign was implemented in the Council’s Planning Department, which manages and circulates a wide variety of documents and forms requiring signature approvals for building and recourse consents. Eliminating paper from this process significantly shortens procedure times, allowing enhanced efficiency. By using a standards-based e-signing solution that provides proof of signer identity, intent, and transaction integrity, the Council has also significantly reduced the risk of fraud.

Christchurch City Council uses CoSign side-by-side with their Trim Electronic Document Management System (EDMS). The CoSign solution works seamlessly with the system, and allows signers to authorise a variety of document types including Microsoft® Word, PDF and CAD drawings. In addition, multiple signatories can authorise a single document using CoSign, as the CoSign digital signature software embeds a signature record that travels with the document for every signature it captures. This portable signature format enables anyone to verify signatory identity and document integrity without the need for additional software.

“What we wanted to achieve with a digital signing capability was a way to speed up our building and resource consent processing procedure, and also an improvement in our Knowledge Management through reducing the amount of paper we work with,” explained Peter Mitchell, General Manager Regulation and Democracy Services Group at Christchurch City Council. “With CoSign, we got exactly what we were looking for.”

In addition to streamlining processes, CoSign has enabled Christchurch City Council to enjoy e-archiving capabilities, saving Council members the hassle and costs associated with managing and maintaining the storage of paper consents.

“The implementation at Christchurch City Council provides yet another example of the tremendous benefit an organization can experience from using digital signatures,” said Mike Eyal, Managing Director, TME Digital Signature “The transformation in the Council’s business processes speaks for itself.”

About Christchurch City Council

Christchurch City Council of New Zealand is responsible for ensuring that its 350,000 residents are well governed and provided for. Located in South Island, Christchurch is New Zealand’s second-largest city, with a total Territorial Authority (TA) of over 145,000 hectares.

For more information please visit http://www.ccc.govt.nz/index.aspx.

About TME Digital Signatures

TME provides professional and comprehensive Digital Signature Solutions and delivers a full range of capabilities that combine advanced technology with local support in New Zealand and Australia. TME bases its activities on the extensive knowledge and experience of its team of experts, providing local and national support for comprehensive solutions for Digital Signatures and Authentication.

For more information please visit www.digitalsignature.co.nz.

About CoSign Digital Signatures

ARX’s CoSign digital signature solution automates approvals affordably in a compliant manner, allowing organizations to go paperless, expedite business processes and save costs. CoSign is the only digital signature solution that is seamlessly integrated with Microsoft SharePoint and other popular DM/ECM solutions. CoSign signatures are globally accepted by external partners without the need for proprietary-validation software. CoSign is also centrally managed through the organization’s user directory for reliable control of signature privileges, and ease of use and administration. Learn more about the CoSign digital signature solution.

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CoSign is a registered trademark and CoSign PSF is a trademark of Algorithmic Research, Ltd. All other trade names and trademarks are the property of their respective holders.

Press Contact:Tal E.