ANTIC schools public administrations on securing administrative documents.

The capacity building seminar which is in its fourth edition kicked off September 25. 

The Technical Adviser No.2 at ANTIC, Alain Mebada Ekani, chaired the opening ceremony on behalf of the Director General of the institution, Prof Ebot Ebot Enaw.

The Mbankomo seminar is aimed at raising awareness of public and private institutions on the need to secure the production chain of official documents they issue in a bid to prevent their falsification. 

In his inaugural lecture, the Director of Information Systems in the Ministry of Higher Education, Prof Atsa Etoundi Roger, said it is regrettable that several government structures are still feet-dragging when it comes to securing their information and documents.

He stated that digitalisation does not only save time and financial resources but also improves the quality of services rendered.

Prof Atsa Etoundi lamented the fact that Cameroon is more and more resorting to foreign expertise to develop and manage digital platforms to manage its data whereas the country has experienced computer scientist which can do the job. 

Enter ANTIC DG’s representative 

Speaking at the start of the workshop, the representative of the Director General of ANTIC said the seminar is part of ongoing measures taken by theinstitution to effectively combat the falsification of official documents issued by public and private institutions. 

While saluting efforts by the state institutions in using Information and Communication Technologies, ICTs, and the internet to disseminate information, Mebada Ekani regretted the“disturbing and alarming rate at which administrative documents, sometimes confidential, are published on social media”.

He mentioned that in some cases, the documents that circulate online are fake and seek to misinform public opinion, discredit public institutions, stir hatred and endanger national security.

“...the advent of digital tools has greatly enhanced and eased the falsification of official documents,” the ANTIC DG’s representative said.

He present the case of some 1,312 fake diplomas detected by the Ministry of Defence during the recruitment process for student Gendarme officers and soldiers for the 2024 fiscal year.

Ekani went on to note that there has been an upsurge in the dissemination of fake administrative documents online with some of them serving as supporting documents to Fake News propagated on social media. 

These crimes, which cause significant financial loss, reputational damage, and sometimes security threats to the state, he said, are carried out by using counterfeit stamps as well as original documents that are forged with the aid of digital tools such as laptops, scanners, printers, USB drives, and Android phones. 

What ANTIC is proposing

In an effort to address and tackle these challenges posed by the adoption of digital technologies to the integrity of official documents, ANTIC has developed a digital signature scheme dubbed Doc@uthANTIC used to secure official documents.

The digital signature provides three key security services notably authentication and integrity of documents and non-repudiation of signatories. 

The service deployed by ANTIC secures official documents by getting them digitally signed generating a QR code in the process which is inserted in the document in question. 

The solution which is downloadable on Play Store equally permits users to verify the authenticity of signed documents by scanning the QR Code using a smartphone. 

The advanced electronic signature has the same legal status as a handwritten signature, in accordance with Article 17 of the Law on cybersecurity and cybercrime in Cameroon. 

The platform is already being used by some public administrations, including the Ministries Finance, Livestock and Agriculture as well as the Standard and Quality Agency, ANOR, and Cameroon Railway Corporation, CAMRAIL.

The Director General of ANTIC has expressed the wish to see more organisations get on board and emulate the laudable example by adopting and integrating the advanced electronic signature scheme into the production chain of their official documents. 

For three days, participants, including law enforcement officers, will gain knowledge on the number of topics, in the face of digital counterfeiting, legal provisions with regard to the falsification of official documents, protection scheme of the National Civil Status Registry, securing travel ticket and conformity certificates among others. The seminar wraps up tomorrow September 27, 2024.

This article was first published in The Guardian Post issue N0:3241 of Thursday September 26, 2024