cityofaustin / electronic-signatures

Policy guidance on how City of Austin departments can use and accept electronic and digital signatures

City of Austin interim guidance on electronic signatures

Communications and Technology Management (CTM) developed this guidance to help City of Austin departments use electronic and digital signatures in internal and community-facing services. This guidance is most immediately relevant to the COVID-19 emergency, but also applies beyond, as departments offer more services online for Austin residents.

Some departments have already adopted electronic or digital signatures, while others haven’t, yet. CTM aims to support all City departments as they use and process electronic signatures during the COVID-19 emergency and beyond.

Use this guidance to:

• Learn about the differences between basic electronic signatures and digital signatures, and which tools support different types of transactions
• Understand how to follow laws and organizational policies (e.g., records retention) when using these tools
• Get advice and help using electronic signatures
• Request access to CTM's electronic signatures tool

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Ready to learn how to use electronic signatures for your transactions?

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About this guidance

Intended audience

• Departments that are currently using or accepting electronic signatures as part of their forms or transactions
• Departments that need to use or accept online signatures as part of their forms or transactions, but are not yet using technology to do this

Goals of this guidance

• Support departments as they use electronic and digital signatures during the COVID-19 emergency.
• Invite departments to give feedback on an electronic signatures tool during the COVID-19 emergency, and help them with accessing it if they are not yet using one.
• Help the City to move more services and transactions online to support social distancing and business efficiency during the COVID-19 emergency.
• Invite departments that have used digital signatures to share what has and has not worked for them.

What this guidance does not do

• Provide special authority or permissions regarding electronic signatures.
• Suggest a process that would contradict any state law, ordinance, policy, rule, or procedure.
• Affect any laws that require paper documents or wet-ink signatures.
• Prevail over any administrative bulletin.
• Suggest a process that ignores a department’s local record retention schedule.
• Replace reviewing the use of electronic signatures with your department's attorney in the Law Department.