For several months the Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) have been working on the development of e-apostilles. This is something the government is keen to implement to simplify the legalisation of documents and they have been working to map out what a digital apostille solution would look like. They have held meetings with foreign authorities, other government departments and external stakeholders to guide the development work, and now report that they will hopefully soon be in a position to begin a private pilot which will see our first e-apostilles being issued for circulation.
How will the E-Apostille work?
Initially, the FCDO plan to issue an electronic apostille (e-apostille) for documents that are uploaded to their website containing the digital signature of a notary public on a notarial coversheet. There will be a clear audit trail to confirm the digital signatures are authentic and have not been tampered with. They will then provide instructions for the recipient to follow in order to view the e-apostille and verify it. Future developments will look at accepting documents from other government departments or officials directly, providing the relevant digital signature standards are met.
The FCDO state –
This initial private pilot will feature a small selection of notaries, who will be testing the interoperability of our systems and providing feedback that will allow us to ensure any teething issues are ironed out ahead of a public launch.
The future of E-Apostilles!
At the time of writing, there is not much information on how electronic apostilles (e-apostilles) will work for the majority of documents. It is likely that notaries and other recognised officials will be able to upload documents with digital signatures or issue documents that can be digitally checked.
However, it is likely that there will be many public officials and organisations producing documents that will not work with a government created system for verifying digital signatures. In the short-term traditional paper apostilles may accompany the e-apostille service or documents may need posting to the FCDO for an e-apostille to be allocated to a hard copy document.
The future of apostilles is not entirely clear, but change is coming and the e-apostille will be used in the coming months.
