As I wedged into my window seat aboard the Seattle-bound 737, I instantly recognized my seatmate-to-be as Governor of Washington state, Christine Gregoire. It was Wednesday, June 30, 2010, and we were both heading home from D.C. after two days of intense lobbying on Capitol Hill. My day wasn’t over just yet. As the plane continued to board, I fired up my laptop and pulled up the live video feed from the House floor, just in time to catch Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wa) leading the floor debate in support of declaring today National ESIGN Day. McDermott was lavishing praise on DocuSign[i] for spearheading the effort. “Well,” the governor said over my shoulder as we watched the measure pass 397-1
Last week I revisted the history behind the rapid adoption of electronic commerce in the US over the past 15 years, along with a suggestion that we may be in for some growing pains. Online identity and trust are still in their adolescence here, and if we do not work toward a more meaningful means of establishing online trust, we will not achieve the true potential of digital transactions. On the other side of the spectrum lies the European Union. While America was building private sector e-commerce empires with low-risk, low value transactions in the 1990’s, Europe instead worked on an electronic commerce model that focused on minimizing online risk. They had good reasons for this: their
