What is the Qualified Electronic Signature, what is it used for, and who can use it?
Have you ever submitted a building permit application? You haven’t? No big deal, as it is widely known how stressful that can be. Of course, a construction project involving existing, listed buildings while also incorporating new elements is complicated. But when it comes to signing the required documents, it can become truly overwhelming. Sometimes, securing funding depends directly on submitting a building permit application, and deadlines can be tight. Many Swiss cantons accept electronic building permit applications, but this does not always apply to all their related attachments. Signed forms must be submitted digitally, and then you have to download an overview form that must be signed physically and sent by post. There is more than one person that will need to sign it: the building owner’s legal representative, the architects, the landowner’s representative, and finally, the leaseholder. It would be an easy procedure if all these people were all in the same place – but they are spread across Switzerland. As a result, the responsible architect, despite being highly qualified, has to rush across Switzerland by bike, train, or taxi multiple times to collect the required signatures and submit the document on the dot.
Shouldn’t this be possible digitally, without bikes, trains, and taxis? It should – and it is, provided that all the parties involved, including the authorities, have digitised their workflows. Since 2014, a new version of a law (ZertES) has regulated the use of electronic signatures. In Europe, a corresponding regulation, known as eIDAS, was enforced in 2014 and is currently under revision.
According to ZertES, there are three types of electronic signatures: the Simple Electronic Signature (SES), the Advanced Electronic Signature (AES), and the Qualified Electronic Signature (QES). The latter is equivalent to a handwritten signature on paper, as required by law for specific business transactions and interactions with authorities. In this case, the architects, building owners, landowner’s representatives, and leaseholders would have needed to establish an identity with a QES provider, and it would have been quite inexpensive. A Qualified Electronic Signature costs 1.80 Swiss francs with DeepSign, while identification via DeepID is free. A major advantage is the free DeepSign app. Even if architect Brönnimann was hiking in the Engadin and Ms. Rüdisühli, the authorized representative of the landowner – a critical player – was on a multi-day wine-tasting tour in Alsace, both could have signed the necessary documents using the DeepSign app, and without traveling across Switzerland by bike, train, or taxi.
High legal security
If the authority wanted to verify the signatures on the overview form, it could have done so on a federal government website. In the near future, the DeepValidator will be introduced – a feature for validating digital signatures that can be integrated directly into applications and used to check the validity of electronic signatures from DeepSign and other providers.
Documents signed with a Qualified Electronic Signature have the highest security level. Any change to the document is verified with timestamps. The signers’ identity is securely verified through a two-factor authentication, while the signature is backed by a qualified certificate from one of the four providers officially recognized in Switzerland.
Important for e-government and specific business transactions
Legislation provides for the written form for certain business processes. These processes, such as terminating a lease agreement by a tenant, signing an apprenticeship contract, or making a gift promise, can be electronically signed using a QES.
More importantly, many official processes require authorities themselves to sign documents or for citizens to submit handwritten-signed documents to government offices. With a QES you can do all this electronically, and it reduces the barriers slowing down the development of Switzerland’s still underdeveloped e-government services.
Even documents that require notarisation, such as amendments to the articles of association of joint-stock companies registered in the Register of Commerce, will be digitally certifiable in the future. The complying signed document, using qualified electronic signatures, will be sent to the notary, who will verify the identity and signatures before forwarding the entire paperwork to the Register of Commerce.
