Enabling paperless workflows through digital signatures Ricardo Almeida

I work as a software developer in a project called FenixEdu which was born here.

Lisboa Portugal

Técnico Lisboa Part of University of Lisbon The biggest of the 18 faculties 12.000 Students (Bsc, Msc, Phd) 900 Teachers and Researchers 3 Campi

FenixEdu Project Open Source Academic Management System Available on https://github.com/fenixedu In the last 2 years it was adopted by the entire University of Lisbon Running now in all 18 faculties

Paper everywhere FenixEdu generates and stores documents for all different purposes which are printed and emboss stamped by our academic services and delivered to the students physically.

Paper everywhere FenixEdu generates and stores documents for all different purposes which are printed and emboss stamped by our academic services and delivered to the students physically. Examples: Exam Date Certificate Registry Certificate Diploma Request School Registration Certificate Enrollment Certificate Approval Certificate Degree Finalization Certificate Diploma Supplement Request Course Load External Course Load Program Certificate External Program Certificate Extra Curricular Certificate Standalone Approvement Certificate

Benefits of going Paperless Business efficiency Higher security of documents Environmentally friendly Maintenance costs Easier storage and accessibility

Transition challenges Resistance to change Initial cost, and mainly… Signed documents or containing emboss stamps

Solution - Smart Signer Generic application to sign documents (e.g. PDF files) Signature is accomplished with a standalone java application (available through Java Web Start) Web-based backoffice for management operations Document queues Users and cards

Solution - Smart Signer

Solution - Smart Signer

Solution - Smart Signer

Solution - Smart Signer

Solution - Certifier Scan certified document url Digitally signed document or go to https://certifier.tecnico.ulisboa.pt and insert Access code to go to certified document

System Architecture SmartSigner server: Java 8 Spring Framework + Hibernate MySQL REST API

System Architecture SmartSigner client: Java 8 JavaFX HTML, CSS, Javascript, Angular

Case Study - Students registration Matriculation Process: Ministry of Education sends the accepted students data which FenixEdu imports; Personal information + assigned degree Users and created automatically in the importation process Students are required by our school to be physically present in the matriculation process

Case Study - Students registration Needed sheets of paper: the student's' schedule; the tuition payment info, which consists of an ATM reference and the values in debt; the tutor info; form required by banks, academic sheet signed by the student. eight registration certificates that must contain an embossed stamp and must be signed by a member of the staff of the academic office of IST.

Case Study - Students registration Needed sheets of paper: the student's' schedule; the tuition payment info, which consists of an ATM reference and the values in debt; the tutor info; form required by banks, academic sheet signed by the student. eight registration certificates that must contain an embossed stamp and must be signed by a member of the staff of the academic office of IST Acessed via FenixEdu platform’s website

Case Study - Students registration Needed sheets of paper: the student's' schedule; the tuition payment info, which consists of an ATM reference and the values in debt; the tutor info; form required by banks, academic sheet signed by the student. eight registration certificates that must contain an embossed stamp and must be signed by a member of the staff of the academic office of IST Acessed via FenixEdu platform’s website Sent via sms

Case Study - Students registration Needed sheets of paper: the student's' schedule; the tuition payment info, which consists of an ATM reference and the values in debt; the tutor info; form required by banks, academic sheet signed by the student. eight registration certificates that must contain an embossed stamp and must be signed by a member of the staff of the academic office of IST Acessed via FenixEdu platform’s website Sent via sms Shared with banks automatically after student consent PDF hand-signed with a tablet

Case Study - Students registration Needed sheets of paper: the student's' schedule; the tuition payment info, which consists of an ATM reference and the values in debt; the tutor info; form required by banks, academic sheet signed by the student. eight registration certificates that must contain an embossed stamp and must be signed by a member of the staff of the academic office of IST Acessed via FenixEdu platform’s website Sent via sms Shared with banks automatically after student consent PDF hand-signed with a tablet SmartSigner

Hand-signature

Hand-signature Only one-way authentication No need for thorough validation Internal academic process sheet

Signing and certification process

Signing and certification process Can be made in bulk No printing required No physical transportation of documents Much faster, does not require physical presence Aditional copies do not require aditional requests Student does not need to go to the secretariat

Certificate Extraction

Certificate Extraction

Certificate Extraction

Certificate Extraction

Certificate Extraction

Certificate Extraction certificates.zip

Signing documents

Signing documents

Signing documents

Signing documents

Signing documents

Results This year, we had more than 1,700 new registrations hand signatures and embossed stamps are now not required about 33,000 sheets of paper were saved from printing (19 per student) about 1,700 documents were signed digitally (no need for copies) using the smart cards generated for that purpose. in total, more than 13,000 signatures were generated Euro Student Card Validating signatures Forging signatures

Questions? hello@fenixedu.org Euro Student Card Validating signatures Forging signatures