[thelist] Digital/Electronic signatures?

[rogerharness at comcast.net]

Evolters, 



I've been asked to look into the ability to use digital/electronic signatures in our department. 



Currently we have a Training Request document that gets filled out by an employee, then a hard-copy goes to his/her supervisor  for "approval" (sign and date), then gets routed/faxed to our office for final approval (again, signed and dated), and finally gets sent BACK to the employee. 



I've been googling/etc., and I've been finding commercial products that might help, but most of what I've seen out there requires some sort of application or at least plug-in to make anything even close to this work. 



We are working with our IT department to create a new Learning Management System (LMS) that at some point -may- allow users to register for training via this LMS, and automatically have an approval request sent to the employee's supervisor, then once approved by the supervisor, the request is sent back to our office. 



But in the meantime, I'm just trying to research if there are any folks currently using any type of electronic/digital signatures that might compare to what we're looking for. -Is- anyone using any type of digital signatures that don't necessarily require additional applications, plug-ins, etc. 



As always, thank you in advance for any help/tips/etc.! 



-Roger Harness