Accelerating Electronic Business Processes Using "e-Notary"
By Terry Walsh
Chicago-based IT and Document Management Consultant

In today's business environment, firms are conducting commerce at the speed of light — well, the world is moving business documents at the speed of light, but (as many of us have experienced) it often slows to the speed of the notary stamp and the frantic search for that notary late on a Friday night. In response, a whole industry is forming around the issues of managing, authenticating, and creating non-repudiation through electronic notarization (or e-Notary, for short).

e-Notary is on the horizon, but with it comes good news and bad. First the good news: e-Notary is coming on strong. Several states are working with the National Notary Association, and have started the "e-Notary" process. e-Notary is taking the initial forms of an innovative electronic software journal, a witnessed e-signature, and (recently) a beta test of a paperless real estate transaction.

Now the bad news: we are still a few years away from a fully electronic notary process and the homogenization of e-Notary law across the country. After observing the emergence of e-Notary over the past decade, I can't help but believe there is a merger coming at some point between e-Notary and major technological innovations, such as those offered by IPv6 addressing.

Notary Defined
Most people are familiar with the traditional notary, but with the emergence of "e-Notary", new terms and definitions abound. For example, the National Notary Association (www.nationalnotary.org) defines electronic notarization as, "any notarial act, or any part thereof, that is executed electronically." A recent paper by the Director or MIT's E-Commerce Architecture Program nicely frames myriad issues that need to be worked out as the e-evolution in Notary occurs (see http://actuarinet.mit.edu/enotarization.pdf).

The bottom line appears to be that by the end of the decade we will most likely have a national e-Notary system, moving us from the manual and very analog way of legally binding identity to documents to complete electronic notary — with digital storage — in a non-repudiation environment.

Future Vision
My observations of the notary process have led me to several conclusions about where the industry will go from here. Here are my predictions:

1. Electronic Notary and its ultimate product — the binding of identity, document (bit stream), signatures, and non-repudiation — are going to require complex credentialing, document storage, and non-repudiation services. These activities are best supported by true peer-to-peer addressing, and massive serialization data structures, as addressed through IPv6.

2. Documents will emerge as "Internet addresses." One concept currently under development by a Delaware-based company combines e-Notarization with serialized Internet addressing. Developed initially under sub-netted IPv4 protocol, this process could flourish and greatly improve as both the components of e-Notarization and IPv6 come into their own over the next 24 months.

   Simply described, the document being notarized is put into a non-repudiation algorithm with the "key" issued to the notarization participants. The parties then electronically record using the National Notary Association's "ENJOA" Electronic Journal. So that only "one digital official document" is created, an Internet address is reserved for the sole purpose of providing federated, non-repudiation, and addressing services to all parties. This allows the contracting parties (in the case of the experiment I am familiar with) to always know where their document is. It establishes what amounts to a user-controlled "electronic safety deposit box."

   What was even more intriguing in the above Delaware-based example was the use of Homeland Security Presidential Directive 12, which mandates "Common Access Card" (CAC) federal credentials. The CAC is used as a general identification card, as well as for authentication to enable access to DoD computers, networks and certain DoD facilities. The CAC enables encrypting and crytographically signing email, facilitating the use of PKI authentication tools, and establishes an authoritative process for the use of identity credentials. This emerging government standard for distributed PKI and credential/identity management could be appropriate for parties that want the complete transaction to be user controlled, secured, notarized, and then encrypted and stored.

3. The law and supporting business infrastructure will evolve over the next two to three years, most likely in state(s) that have a reputation for efficient business systems and judicial processes (e.g., Delaware, Nevada, Florida, Utah, etc.). The legal community, through the American Bar Association and the National Commissioners on Uniform State Law (among others), along with the Federal government, will create model laws and guidelines that will catalyze a single national process for e-Notary.

4. e-Notary is a ultimately a metaphor for the evolution of all business processes and transactions to an environment where the complexities of information assurance are addressed at multiple levels. As the concept of e-Notary permeates various business sectors (such as medical records, real estate transactions, and banking), the business practices supporting digital identity, credentialing, transaction authentication and other functions will be part of the new fabric of e-Notary, based on specific industry needs:

   • Medical professionals, institutions, insurance providers and patients will agree on single "official" records.
   • Banking business processes such as Security Interest Filings, will be "officially notarized."
   • Digital "Trading rooms" will exist for the purpose of supporting transactions for mergers and acquisitions.
   • Individual consumers will have "personal information trust" accounts similar to those they physically maintain in the form of a bank safety deposit box.
   • Even documents not traditionally notarized during real estate transaction processes will be bundled into the "official notarized file."

   To an information technology professional, Notary will ultimately become a state recognized Information Assurance process.

5. The Notary and the "notarial act" will evolve to the point where massive numbers of discrete documents, images and other electronic media are "e-Notarized" and deposited into user-controlled and / or state-sanctioned repositories I would describe as "information trust agents." What type of information would be deposited? I leave that to the reader's imagination, but one thing is clear to me: it will need to be serialized and retrievable in an efficient, highly secure, but addressable system.

6. e-Wills will become normal. My legal colleagues tell me that today there is no such thing as an e-Will — but there will be. Of course, this e-Will must be witnessed, and should be e-Notarized on the way into any digital storage domain. Keeping track of something like a will is not always easy — for instance, I personally can't quite tell you where my will is (then again, locating it is something I have conveniently burdened others with...). I will, however, predict that the State that sanctions the first "e-Notarized" secure e-Will system will have a major revenue opportunity!

7. Official State-recognized data storage will emerge. Examples of such storage vaults include the Delaware Digital Safety Deposit Box and the Utah Personal Medical Records Repository. As I look towards a future of legally recognized paperless processes, I for one will put my "e-Will" into a state-sanctioned "Digital Safety Deposit Box." I can imagine that with single or dual biometric access control, millions of Americans, when afforded the opportunity, will in fact choose a locatable, Internet-addressed electronic repository.

I look forward to the day when my personalized portfolio of IPv6 addresses will provide access without any impediment to family members, medical professionals, and others whom I credential to the parts of my digital domain containing my "e-Notarized" official records.

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Terry Walsh is a Chicago-based business executive. He has previously consulted with Fortune 500 Companies and federal and state governments on information assurance, document management, and IT management. Terry has worked with companies and led projects to create virtual businesses focusing on the issues of corporate identify and intellectual property management on the Internet. More recently, he led a business designed to create Internet-based data storage services, and developed content management software to support the manufacturing and financial industries. Terry can be contacted at: terry_walsh@wideopenwest.com

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