Hague, NNA Introduce Historic eApostille Pilot Program

By Michael Mink
mmink@nationalnotary.org

The increasing reliance on the Notary office in international dealings, spurred by the rapid global proliferation of digital documents and e-commerce, has resulted in a collaboration between the Hague Conference on Private International Law and the National Notary Association in introducing a historic eApostille Pilot Program. The Program will support eNotarization by implementing secure digital Notary authentications for the safe and instantaneous exchange of electronic documents worldwide.

Announcement of the Program comes on the heels of tremendous progress in eNotarization and digital business processes, driven by the NNA, in which Notaries are being regarded with higher levels of respect in their fraud-fighting and consumer-protecting roles. Technologies and practices developed to support eNotarization are being adapted to allow for eApostilles.

For over four decades, the apostille has served as a simplified and standardized authentication certificate in a system used between nations to verify the authority of foreign Notaries in compliance with a treaty called the Hague Convention Abolishing the Requirement of Legalization for Foreign Public Documents. The Convention was created to streamline a costly and time-consuming international authentication process that often required collecting as many as seven or eight separate authenticating certificates from various domestic and foreign officials and ministers in order to confirm the authority of a particular Notary. A single apostille replaces the multiple authenticating certificates.

Since 1961, nations subscribing to this time-saving Hague Convention have used paper apostilles. That process has now entered the digital age with the introduction of the eApostille Pilot Program — a low cost and secure model for the issuance and use of electronic apostilles. The Program will be unveiled at the Conference's headquarters in The Hague, Netherlands, in April before an international audience of the apostille Convention's subscribing states at the Conference's 2006 Special Commission on General Affairs and Policy.

"This is a very exciting time for Notaries Public. The eApostille Program will streamline interstate and international digital document exchanges by making the process faster and more efficient, without sacrificing document integrity and reliability," said Dr. Richard J. Hansberger, the NNA's eNotarization Director, who was one of the featured presenters at the international meeting.

The Pilot Program will ensure consumer protection, security and trust in documents exchanged between nations, as apostilles are currently being used by 87 of the Hague's member states. NNA Vice President and Executive Director Timothy S. Reiniger will be aggressively providing direction and support for implementation of the Pilot Program.

"We are eager to work with U.S. secretaries of state and member nations to further adoption," Reiniger said. "This Program reflects the critical importance of the Notary Public office in international commerce."

Vital to the Pilot Program is an eApostille Registry that is operated by member-state authorities to record the eApostilles they have issued. The entire process can be easily incorporated into existing business systems.

The new eApostille system is the culmination of ideas and conclusions reached on the practical operation of the Hague apostille Convention at the historic 1st International Forum on eNotarization and eApostilles, hosted by the NNA in conjunction with its 2005 annual Conference. The main conclusion of that meeting was that the 44-year-old Convention was written generally enough to embrace both paper and electronic transactions.

The NNA will be offering educational support, documentation and technological resources to all interested governments and industries in developing workflow for the issuance and management of eApostilles. The suggested model is just one option. The objective of the Program is to encourage the usage of eApostilles and electronic registries.

Further discussion and Pilot Program support will commence at the 2nd International Forum on eNotarization and eApostilles, which is part of the NNA's 28th annual Conference (May 27-31 in Washington, D.C.). For more eNotarization options for government and businesses, please contact the NNA at eapostille@NationalNotary.org.