President Bidya Devi Bhandari has launched digital signature for the first time in the country amidst a function organised here in the Capital on Wednesday.

Digital signature is a special government certified identification code which is used to authenticate digital information such as documents, e-mail messages by the sender or the signatory and ensures that the document is unchanged and genuine.

The Office of the Controller of Certification (OCC) had initiated the works related to this under the Electronic Transactions Act-2063 BS and Regulations-2064 BS with an objective of making electronic transactions safe and reliable.

Launching the digital signature, President Bhandari said that it was the need of the hour to take the public services to the access of the general public by making it safe, credible, authentic and smooth after maximum use of information technology.

President Bhandari expressed the view that the digital signature would be a milestone in the initiative of the government of maintaining electronic good governance by ending wrongdoings while receiving and providing services including fake signature as well as documents.

She further said that the use of digital signature would not only modernize business, it would further strengthen relations between government and service recipients as it would help to make the service delivery easy and smooth as well as reliable.

Similarly, Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli expressed the belief that information technology would further contribute in economic development after the political movement.

Stating that it was necessary to move ahead by facing challenges that would surface with the beginning of digital signature, Prime Minister Oli expressed happiness over moving the act ahead with a determination of heading overall social activities towards electronic good governance.

He also assured that there would be full support from the government to make it successful.

Stating that it was the medium to make the electronic transactions secure and to authenticate them, Minister for Information and Communication Technology, Sherdhan Rai said that it would help control the misuse of records.

On the occasion, Communications Secretary Sunil Bahadur Malla, Country Manager of International Finance Corporation (IFC) for Nepal, Bangladesh and Bhutan, Wendy Jo Werner, and OCC Controller Birendra Kumar Mishra shed light on the benefits in public services due to the application of digital signature.

The OCC has given permission to Radiant Info-tech Nepal Company to issue digital signatures.

The first token with digital signature was presented to President Bhandari soon after the launching of it. Similarly, PM Oli and Minister Rai were also presented with such tokens.