The Swiss Police Informatics Congress (SPIK) is dedicated to police informatics, operational communication and the networking of police and industry.
SPIK attracts computer scientists and managers from all police forces as well as the information and communication sector, business and politics. The congress is organized by the Federal Office for Civil Protection and representatives of the police and the economy and is commissioned by the Swiss Police ICT Association, which includes representatives of various police forces and various IT companies.
The use of different types of electronic signatures is the key to trustworthy electronic processing and archiving in law enforcement, as envisaged in the Swiss Justitia 4.0 project. There are still police forces in Switzerland that work mainly with signatures on paper. The use of resources (working time, paper, etc.) is suboptimal and not particularly sustainable, and the working methods are cumbersome.
Only by using regulated seals, in combination with the biometric features of a hand signature, can police processes be digitalized as far as possible – from form capture on the front line to the recipients and the archive. Some Swiss police authorities are already using an electronic signature solution – such as the police in Zug, who have been relying on Namirial’s solution for years when it comes to capturing signatures.
In addition to speeding up processes and seamless documentation, the evidential value of the process documentation is also increased: a combination of advanced electronic signatures, coupled with the biometric features of a handwritten signature and flanked by a regulated seal on the signed document, are even more meaningful than a handwritten signature on paper from the point of view of forensic experts.
Article 78a of the Code of Criminal Procedure from 2020 does not remove the signature requirement either; the court reporter must sign the minutes they have drawn up.
At this years SPIK, Andreas van der Linden, Sales Account Manager at Namirial, and our customer from the Zug police, Michael Rudolf, will show how they have been using the currently common manual signature in a completely electronic form and in an evidential manner since the beginning of 2021. We will be happy to answer any questions afterwards.
For more inspiration:
📺 Request access to recording of Electronic Signature in St. Gallen Police Processes
📺 Access Webinar Recording E-Signature in Law Enforcement feat. Police Zug
(recordings in German language)