Estonia's digital signature system has paved the way for some of its most useful e-services including Company Registration Portal, the nation's groundbreaking i-voting system, electronic tax filing and DigiDoc – essentially any services that require signatures for their validity.
Because e-Estonia's infrastructure is an open system, new services can always be integrated. Businesses can freely use the digital signature system as well, and have applied it to a variety of web-based services.
Estonia boasts one of the world's most advanced digital signature systems thanks to two crucial developments:
- In March 2000, Parliament passed a law giving electronic signatures the same legal weight as traditional paper signatures.
- The nation's groundbreaking electronic ID infrastructure has created an effective and universal system for secure identification.
When a website offers the digital signature option:
- The user has entered the information to be signed (tax declaration, ballot choices, contracts, etc.).
- The site asks the user if they would like to digitally sign the information.
- If the user clicks 'yes', a window from a third-party Certificate Center pops up, asking for the PIN codes connected to the user's electronic ID Card.
- The Certificate Center verifies the codes and sends a confirmation back to the website.
