Signature Policy Actors and Their Roles

A signature policy issuer is any party, not necessarily the signatory, that describes the usage of an electronic signature according to a prescribed procedure associated with a transaction. Examples of parties that issue signature policies can be legal persons, i.e., organizations setting out the conditions under which an electronic signature used by their agents can bind them. Such an example might include the conditions for the procurement of goods by an organization, a tax return form, etc.

A signatory is an individual that creates an electronic signature. A signatory may act as an agent of the user of the transaction or be contractually related to him. As a signatory is primarily responsible for the act of signing, has an interest in the conditions conveyed by means of a signature policy that formalize the application of such signature in a transaction. The signatory is overall responsible to provide notice of the signing conditions that apply on each transaction with its business counterparts.

A signatory may sign under either an individual capacity or a predetermined role. There are two types of roles envisaged for an electronic signature: a claimed role and a certified role. A claimed role merely contains a statement of the signatory that enters into a transaction under a certain role. Such role attribute might be legally important, for example, to decide on whether a signatory acted as a consumer, a trading party, etc. When the signatory asserts such information, there is no proof that the signatory acted under any role. If at a later stage it can be proved that the signatory did not have that role at the time of the signature, then the signatory may be held responsible for providing false information. A certified role carries information to prove that the signatory had a designated role at the time of the signature.

A verifier is the party controlling a signed document or the beneficiary of a transaction. A verifier needs first to make sure that the policy invoked by the signatory is appropriate for his business needs. In accepting a signature policy, a verifier must perform certain actions, such as validate the authenticity and content of a signature policy. The objective for the verifier is to ensure the authenticity of the signature policy and subsequently to assess whether to accept or reject the transaction.