Dear FERPA Professor,
Recently, a US Department of Homeland Security official visited us at the Office of the Registrar requesting a copy of a graduate's transcript. He provided his badge for identification, and a copy of the form the graduate "signed" allowing this federal agency access to his records as part of the employment process. The graduate "digitally signed" the online form, so the copy we received did not have an actual signature but rather simply stated that it had been digitally signed.
Could you please outline best practices for these types of situations?
Arty Reale
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Dear Arty,
Concerning your inquiry relating to digitally signed consents, generally you would want to be very cautious on accepting them because your institution did not create the digital signature and thus, have no way of authenticating the signature. However, in the case of the OPM or other Federal government offices such as Homeland Security, you should be fine relying on their authentication process. This was the same approach we took at the Department of Education when, a number of years ago, we changed the FERPA regulations to say that the student must provide a signed, dated consent form.
Prior to that change the regulations required that the institution must have a signed, dated consent from the student. We made this change specifically to accommodate the practice of OPM investigators who, while the student had provided OPM with the consent, the investigators did not physically bring the copy with them. The logic behind this was that OPM would not move ahead with any kind of background checks without first requiring the student to sign a consent. However, in those instances where parties other than OPM, other Federal agencies or other trusted third parties claimed to have a student consent, institutions would want to require a copy of the consent form.
I hope this is responsive to your question.
The FERPA Professor
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