Uganda Registration Services Bureau (URSB), has advised those who want to use electronic signatures on documents submitted for registration, have it authenticated by at least one authority beforehand.
The Bureau says that in Uganda, the major databank that can easily be trusted is with the National Information Technology Authority, Uganda (NITA-U), according to Steven Baryevuga, URSB’s Communications Specialist.
Th clarification follows complaints from various people about failure to successfully submit documents bearing electronic signatures, with others accusing the personnel there of either incompetence or lacking an automated system that automatically rejects the signatures.
“I have suffered with URSB,” says Alex Kakande on his X social media account. “I believe they need training. I can’t be submitting documents to using electronic signature and all world adopted to them but our registrars are still refusing them.”
Another one, Paul Mukasa, also adds that he has tried several times but the registrars keep rejecting his electronic signature. “Are they aware of the Law or they are just ‘bypassers’?”
Indded, URSB’s Baryevuga says that they are aware that the law is there, the Electronic Signatures Act, Cap 98, but that URSB has not yet acquired the requisite infrastructure to fully operationalise it. “The law is in place,” Baryevuga says. “However, as a country we don’t have the infrastructure at the moment. For one to use an electronic signature it must be registered somewhere and each time you need to use it, it’s authenticated and the users authorized its use” He adds that the electronic signature should also be verifiable.
This means that for a signature to be acceptable and verifiable, it must be already registered somewhere in a database that can be referred to.
“For Uganda, NITA is supposed to do the same,” Baryevuga explains. “It must be secure and encrypted because this reduces cases of forgery.”
Experts say there is need for sensitizing Ugandans, including corporate managers on the legal application of electronic signatures.
“Many companies believe that pasting a scanned image of a handwritten signature into a PDF is a legally sound way to execute documents electronically,” says AF Mpanga, a popular law firm in a statement. “It is not. That practice, though widespread, offers almost no protection against repudiation. If a counterparty later claims they never signed, or that the document was tampered with, a JPEG (a digital image format) image of a signature tells you nothing about who placed it there or when.”
There are three different laws in Uganda that regulate or support the use of the electronic signature; the Electronic Transactions Act, Cap 99, the Electronic Signatures Act, Cap 98, and the Computer Misuse Act, Cap 96 (as amended).
“These laws create a framework that recognizes electronic signatures as legally valid but not all electronic signatures equally,” says Mpanga.
Authentic v simple electronic signature
The Electronic Transactions Act sets out two categories of electronic signatures according to their weight which established their acceptability.
“At the lower end, you have Simple Electronic Signatures, a typed name at the bottom of an email, a scanned image, or a signature drawn on a touchscreen,” write the lawyers. “These are legally recognized, but they carry a weak evidentiary presumption. If a dispute arises, the party relying on that signature must prove, often with considerable difficulty, that it was genuinely placed by the person it is attributed to.”
At the other end, AF Mpanga says, are Advanced Electronic Signatures (AES) and Secure Digital Signatures, cryptographically (absolutely secured) tied to the person who signed, was created using data under that person’s sole control, and is attached to the document in a way that makes any subsequent tampering immediately detectable.
When such a signature is used especially through accredited Public Key Infrastructure like the NITA-U system, or enterprise e-signature software, the law makes verifying and proof easy, that that the signature is authentic and was affixed intentionally, as per Section 7 of the Electronic Signatures Act-URN. Give us feedback on this story through our email: kamwokyatimes@gmail.com
