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Business-Suitable Document Authentication System?

Posted by timothy on from the sign-each-pigeon-as-it-flies-by dept.

ram.loss writes "The company I work for has decided to go paperless for all memos and internal correspondence. In addition to the central administration, the company has three more or less autonomous, physically separated divisions; that means we do not have a common IT infrastructure across all of them. Since I am the only resemblance we have to an IT department at my division, I have been commissioned with evaluating the available technology to manage and authenticate all correspondence, although it is not my area of expertise (I have a CompSci degree, but for many years have specialized in transportation modeling software). My initial thought was to use a document management system like Plone (this is the system I'm familiar with); from what I have read, that would take care of the management part, but what about authentication? We need each document to be signed, and a fully auditable system that keeps track of who signed what document, who received it and when. It also must take into account the handling of external correspondence in the future, where a recipient outside the company must have the means to return an authenticated document as a response. I'm aware that I'm leaving out a lot of details, like how the documents will be signed, the legal implications, etc., but for the time being I'm only interested in the experiences of the Slashdot crowd with such systems, and hopefully finding out enough information to hand over the matter to (or hiring) somebody more qualified, once I know what to look for. Has anybody out there used a similar system? Am I in way over my head?"

3 of 130 comments (clear)

  1. Try Knowledgetree by PdbAqB · · Score: 5, Informative

    Try Knowledgetree - It's open source, has workflow and it is fully audited: http://www.knowledgetree.com/solutions/industry-solutions We use it in our law firm (I manage it - we are relatively small http://1p.com.au/ and it runs without any specific expertise. I have previously tried other solutions without success. We also really appreciate knowledgetree's ability to interact seamlessly with MSOffice etc. Good luck

  2. Lotus NotesDomino by kirthn · · Score: 5, Informative

    Lotus Notes/Domino by IBM takes care of all that...including external branches, ditigital signatures, track of who has been reading it, who where the previous readers etc etc... etc...we have been using it extensively and provides everything you just described.....

    --
    Famous last words:"but...."
  3. Re:SharePoint by YrWrstNtmr · · Score: 5, Informative

    One of the main issues with SharePoint (aside from the whole MS ecosystem) is that it is a large complex beast. Once you move beyond the base SharePoint Services and into SharePoint Server, the maintenance will drown you. Especially if you are only one deep.
    And I say this as a SharePoint admin/developer for a large US govt organization.

    But yes, the base SharePoint Services 3.0 and upcoming SP Foundation(2010) will do pretty much everything he's asking for. And it's free (beer), if you are already running Server2003 or Server2008.

    Also, FAR more requirements gathering is needed. What do the bosses really want?