SCS, together with our subsidiary Trusted Hub, provides cost-effective and highly accurate digital imaging services to produce electronic documents that are compliant with the Singapore Evidence Act.

In 1997, Singapore amended the Evidence Act to allow the use of electronic records as evidence in the courts. Minister for Law Professor S. Jayakumar noted that document imaging technologies have enabled users to keep images of their paper documents in electronic media, thereby allowing them to save storage costs as the paper originals could then be destroyed. "Any institution that takes the necessary steps to obtain certification as an approved process may, of course, then destroy their paper documents with confidence," he said.

A year later, in July 1998, the Electronic Transactions Act (ETA) was enacted to provide a legal foundation for electronic signatures, and to give predictability and certainty to contracts formed electronically.

The imaging process is audited annually by PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PWC). The audit involves stringent quality checks at each stage of the conversion process to ensure that the image captured is clear, complete and accurate. PWC also audits the physical and electronic security of the entire process to ensure that data integrity is up kept. All electronic documents are hardened with date and time stamping, as well as electronically signed and sealed such that they cannot be tampered with. An audit trail is also available such that a log is made every time a document is accessed or changed. The storage facilities for electronic documents are also audited regularly to ensure that security is of the highest standard.

Electronic documents enable straight-through processing, which increases an organisation's efficiency in document handling and improves workflow and eliminates paper records, freeing up physical storage space. With electronic storage, the organisation will also be able to access documents instantly, instead of having to call up the archives and ask for a document to be found, copied, and delivered. This also paves the way for more effective business continuity planning by allowing data to be stored at alternative sites for recovery purposes. SCS works with Trusted Hub to provide workflow and other value-added services once the electronic copy is available.