Bringing the traditional and digital worlds together
Empower people to bridge the Digital Divide. Taste ELPAP.
ELPAP – Electronic to Paper Point of Service
Hybrid Services
ELPAP offers a set of hybrid services such as interconnecting the electronic form with the physical form of the same document and/or allowing the client to carry out a particular action assisted by a clerk or by a qualified and trusted person.
Bridging the Digital Divide
The aim and raison d‘être of ELPAP is to bridge the Digital Divide through interconnecting the digitized world with the traditional one, through offering an ELPAP Point-of-Service assistant to the people who do not or cannot want to use services of the digital world.
ELPAP Top Level Architecture
ELPAP comprises the following functional blocks:
ELPAP functions
ELPAP – Offered services
Authorized Paper-to-Electronic Conversion of Documents
The authorized conversion of a document represents a specific form of the authorized legalization of the document. An authorized paper document is converted into an electronic form by the authorized person. (The authorized person is an ELPAP Point-of-Service assistant, i.e. a trusted and trained person, typically a civil servant.) The electronic document (a product of the authorized conversion) is then considered legalized and having the same legal force as the original document in paper form. For the future reference, a record of this conversion act (an apostille) is created and stored in the database of conversions (apostille escrow). The contents of the documents, however, are not being stored.
Authorized Electronic-to-Paper Conversion of Documents
Similarly, an authorized electronic document can be converted into a physical one (in paper form) by the authorized person. The document in paper form (a product of the authorized conversion) is then considered as legalized and having the same legal force as the original document in electronic form. For future reference, a record of this conversion act (an apostille) is created and stored in the database of conversions (apostille escrow), and it is also attached to the printed version of the document (in paper form). The contents of the documents, however, are not being stored.
Granting Power of Attorneys
Specific document legalization. In a particular matter, many people on many occasions prefer to be represented by professionals. (The professionals deal with authorities, they include attorneys, notaries, authorized persons in construction, accountants, but also office colleagues.) The agenda of Powers of Attorney is rich and sophisticated. It requires a document management system for such documents. There have to be a lot of document related options, regarding their handling, security, expiration etc. ELPAP offers a full range of options to make dealing with this agenda proper and secure.
Paper Document Legalization
It is an authorized legalization of a document where the paper document is legalized, typically by being signed by the client in presence of a trusted person (clerk). For future reference, a record of that act (an apostille) is created by the authorized person and stored in the database (apostille escrow), and the apostille is then printed on the authenticated document. The contents of the documents, however, are not being stored.
Personal Data Submission
It is possible to edit or add client’s personal data while the authorized person verifies the client’s identity. The client can edit or add their personal data in their preferred back-office database system. The system must only require the client’s identity to be authorized. This saves the travel time of the client as well as the front desk costs of the back-office owner since the client need not visit the front desk (in order to edit their data in the citizens’ registry when changing an address, adding a mobile phone number or a notification email address). Moreover, there are less clients to be served at the back-office database owner front desk.
ELPAP Wallet Management
Frequent ELPAP users will appreciate the convenience of an ELPAP Wallet application which stores a log of all their ELPAP activities, and also secure links to Power of Attorney documents, granted or accepted. Furthermore, it provides for ELPAP user account management. This functionality manages the lifecycle of the application, e.g. it verifies the user and their phone number, lets them reset their password etc.
About the Authors
Since 2008, the Czech government have faced the challenge of Smart Administration and they deal with it their own way. It took them four years to lay the foundations of eGovernment. The “Czech way”, which incorporates tools to migrate documents between the physical (paper) and digital worlds, provides for the coexistence of paper and digital administration and for the transition from one to the other.
We, at DATASYS, NEWPS.CZ and Software602, have the sole success criterion – the number of users in the systems we have designed, delivered, and maintained. We have succeeded with Czech POINT and the Databox System, and we are willing to repeat such successful projects again, with the same success criterion in place.
Contacts
