New electronic signature saves working time and money

The chief architect of IT services at Aalto University, Patrik Maltusch, is excited. Maltusch, who has piloted the new electronic signature, estimates that the service saves annual working time of Aalto employees worth the work input of decades for other duties.

In the spring of 2017, Aalto University joined a pilot project in which Telia was developing a new, legally binding electronic signature called Telia Sign.

"We were eager to take part. Aalto University annually processes tens of thousands of documents that require a signature," says Patrik Maltusch.

The preparation of the documents, getting signatures from several people, and mailing the documents takes up a lot of valuable working time, which could be used better.

When Aalto introduces the new electronic signature, the university may, even when conservatively estimated, save time that totals the work input of tens of people every year.

Telia Sign is ideal for, for example, signing employment contracts. This is how it works: The employer signs the agreement in digital format and sends the agreement to the employee in electronic format. The employee authenticates his/her identity by a Mobile Certificate or bank id. He or she likewise signs the agreement digitally and returns it to the employer – in electronic format, of course.

Maltusch outlines that in the future Aalto will be able to utilize such a signature in numerous documents, and consequently save enormous amounts of work time and money. A few concrete examples of the service.

Signing of employment contracts relating to teaching

For example, approximately 3500 employment contracts relating to teaching are drafted at Aalto each year.

"We must legally certify all these agreements. The introduction of the electronic signature would annually save approximately 14 000 hours of time that the signing of employment contracts relating to teaching take up. The majority of this is Aalto worktime. This equals the annual work input of seven people This time would be freed for other duties and remove unnecessary waiting time,” Maltusch estimates.

Maltusch estimates that the manual signing process of one employment contract currently takes the total of about four hours from different people.

"The employment contract is printed, signed and mailed. If the other party does not accept the employment contract, you will have to wait for a correction suggestion and draft the agreement anew. In the new signing service, you can see in real time if the other party has rejected the suggestions and you can contact them immediately.”

Official invitations for visitors from abroad

Aalto University has numerous international contacts, and in connection with various visits an official invitation is often required.

"We have cooperation partners around the world, and we need a variety of signatures from them. When we invite a foreign researches as our guest, we must send an official invitation verified with a signature. The visitor needs this official invitation as he/she applies for a visa."

Transcripts of credits

Students, for their part, need signed transcripts of credits when seeking student discounts.

“We already sign approximately 15 000 transcripts of credits electronically. However, this is not based on strong identification. The new service provides a stronger identification, which means that the reliability of our signatures will be improved."

Telia listened to the proposals of our pilot team

At the test phase, the chief architect of IT services at Aalto, Patrik Maltusch, gathered a pilot team consisting of university employees. The team investigated how electronic signatures can be applied to Aalto’s internal processes and how automatization could be best carried out.

"During the piloting, Telia listened to our needs and proposals on which way to develop the service. Our observations were related to, for example, how electronically-signed public documents should avoid the use of the personal identity numbers and replace it with an electronic transactions identifier (SATU), which is provided, for example, through the Mobile certificate."

"One potential future use could be related to signatures relating to renting facilities. It is a huge benefit that we get such a signature service that works directly on a mobile device," says Maltusch.