1. Enabling paperless workflows through digital signatures
Ricardo Almeida

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

3. Lisboa
Portugal

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

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

6. 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.

7. 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

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

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

10. 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

11. Solution - Smart Signer

12. Solution - Smart Signer

13. Solution - Smart Signer

14. Solution - Smart Signer

15. Solution - Certifier Scan certified document url
Digitally signed document
or go to
and insert Access code to go to certified document

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

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

18. 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

19. 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.

20. 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

21. 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

22. 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

23. 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

24. Hand-signature

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

26. Signing and certification process

27. 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

28. Certificate Extraction

29. Certificate Extraction

30. Certificate Extraction

31. Certificate Extraction

32. Certificate Extraction

33. Certificate Extraction
certificates.zip

34. Signing documents

35. Signing documents

36. Signing documents

37. Signing documents

38. Signing documents

39. 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

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