Northern Territory gets Smart with e-Signatures

Northern Territories Business Centre

Industry: Government | Product: Adobe LiveCycle ES | Avoka FormCenter

Trying to maintain businesses in remote areas of the Northern Territory is not an easy feat. For the Northern Territories Business Centre the challenge was trying to help businesses apply for the essential licences they need, in an accessible approach whilst being Government compliant. SmartForms using eSignatures paved the way to an easier system for all involved.

The Northern Territory Business Centre (Department of Business and Employment) was established to make it as easy as possible for businesses to deal with Government within that region. Managing interactions and processes for licenses applications, the NT Business Centre works on behalf of a large number of government agencies. Their business can involve dealing with items such as: work safety licences for NT Worksafe; gaming and liquor licences for NT Department of Justice; and poisons and radiations licences for the NT Department of Health.

However, applications for these licences were problematic – the paper forms that were in place were laden with errors resulting in much time spent amending and qualifying data with clients. In addition to this more resources were consumed in time spent chasing for missing information. All in all this created poor customer service and operational inefficiencies.

These were not the only challenges the NT Business Centre faced. To make matters more complex for them as a business, they are servicing remote regional areas which means intermittent internet access for their clients, large wait times for postal procedures, and sizeable travel times for face-to-face meetings.

Digital signatures provide ease and compliance

The introduction of SmartForms was a clear solution to all of these issues that NT Business Centre were facing yet there was a final complication that would mean this project would have to go that extra mile to find a resolution: all forms submitted to the organization require a wet signature on them, and due to the forms being a Statutory Declaration the e-signatures inclusion was vital for compliance with the law.

Therefore, digital signatures were also to be introduced to allow a fully automated licence application process. To acquire these signatures more easily the project with the Business Centre developed a system whereby citizens can use their pre-existing Australian Tax Office (ATO) certificates to sign PDF forms. This meant where data was submitted to the NT Government the citizen can use this pre-lodged data to authenticate themselves.

To ensure extra security with such a procedure, a previously existing Federal Government system, VANGuard was used in conjunction with the solution to verify the certificate used for the signature. Using Avoka FormCenter – the form is submitted by the citizen and VANGuard is invoked automatically – if the authentication is positive then the form is submitted to the NT Government, and where the Certificate is not validated through VANGuard the citizen is asked to provide a different signature.

Cost reduction plus better data protection

Applicants are now able to receive a better customer experience in one easy step and in an accessible format. As a result they’ll spend less time dealing with Government compliances and more time focussed on their business – licences can be submitted and issued with speed and efficiency that did not exist before.

For the Northern Territories Business Centre the solution will reduce costs due to the improvement of internal process efficiencies through the automated service. The solution aims to facilitate the online channel which will bring greater ROI. Moreover, the complex licence applications are now more secure than previously, and are compliant with Government regulations – meaning better data protection.

Through the combined utilization of Adobe’s LiveCycle ES 8.2 and Avoka FormCenter – a SmartForm solution creates an intelligent system that employs pre-existing programmes and creates a better experience both for the business and the customer.

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