Electronic document management in Armenia

Paperless cross-border e-commerce offers significant potential not only for increasing competitiveness in global trade, but also for addressing new challenges associated with the development of international e-commerce and the digital economy.

Electronic document flow in Armenia is regulated primarily by the RA Law of January 15, 2005 No. ЗР-40 “On Electronic Documents and Electronic Digital Signatures.”

What is an electronic document?

This is information or message presented in electronic form.

An electronic document has internal and external forms of presentation:

• Internal representation: the result of registration on an electronic medium of information constituting an electronic document.
• External presentation: the result of reproducing an electronic document on the screen of a video device (display), paper or other material object other than an electronic medium, in a form accessible to visual inspection and understandable to perception.

Legal force of an electronic document

The original electronic document exists only on electronic media. All copies of an electronic document and its analogues registered on an electronic medium are considered originals and have equal legal significance.

If the original electronic document is required, this requirement is considered satisfied if:

a) it is possible to prove that the electronic document has not been changed since the moment it was sent and (or) transferred for storage, with the exception of those reversible changes that are necessary and inevitable when sending and (or) storing this electronic document;

b) it is possible to present the external form of an electronic document without substantive changes to a person who does not have special technical knowledge, in a clear and understandable form.

Article 4 of the law establishes that an electronic document, in order to ensure the protection of an electronic document, may include one or more electronic digital signatures. At the same time, it is important to know that state bodies, local governments, individuals and legal entities, organizations are not required to accept electronic documents protected by digital signature if they do not have the appropriate technical means

Copies of an electronic document can be expressed externally - by reproducing the document on paper with certification of the correspondence of the document on paper to the electronic document. This can be done by noting that the paper document is a copy of the electronic document. It is necessary to affix the signature and seal of the certifying person who issued the electronic document.

Electronic versions of primary (accounting) documents replace their paper versions in cases established by the Government of the Republic of Armenia, or if, in accordance with the requirements established by the legislation of the Republic of Armenia, their paper versions have been preserved.

Application of the EDS

The procedure for using an electronic digital signature is established by its manufacturer.

Digital signature verification data is created by the signer or certification authority. For this purpose, hardware and (or) software must be used.

Confirmation of the validity of the EDS to all interested parties is carried out by the signatory - by delivery in person or by transfer of supporting data or an EDS certificate. You can also contact a certification center, which will provide information about the validity of the digital signature to any interested party in response to a request.

Article 12 establishes the rules for the operation of certification centers. Among other things, this includes:

• provide data for creating and verifying an electronic digital signature;

• take into account issued certificates and electronic digital signature verification data;

• certify that the electronic digital signature certificate issued by them and the electronic digital signature verification data belong to the signatory;

• identify and confirm the compliance of the electronic digital signature verification data and the electronic digital signature certificate;

An electronic document protected by an electronic signature has the same legal meaning as a document certified by a person’s handwritten signature if:

• the authenticity of the digital signature has been confirmed;
• there is no sufficient evidence that the document has been changed or falsified since the moment it was sent and (or) transferred for storage;

EDI in contracts

The use of EDI and EDS in transactions is regulated by the Civil Code of the Republic of Armenia .

Thus, paragraph 3 of Article 296 of the Civil Code of the Republic of Armenia establishes that the parties by agreement may establish the possibility of using an electronic digital signature or another analogue of a handwritten signature is allowed when concluding transactions.

An agreement in written form can be concluded by exchanging documents via electronic communication, which allows one to reliably establish that the document comes from a party to the agreement - Article 450 of the Civil Code of the Republic of Armenia.

What is Official Email?

Official email is a freely provided means of official communication for receiving messages. According to the legislation of the Republic of Armenia, a person is considered duly notified if the information is sent to his official email address and there is an electronic confirmation of reading.

In the Republic of Armenia, when issuing identification cards, individuals are also provided with an official email address.

State bodies, local government bodies and legal entities registered in the Republic of Armenia also receive an official email address.

The official email address of an individual consists of the individual’s public services license plate and the domain “@e-citizen.am”, in the absence of a public services license plate, from the number of the certificate of non-receipt. The official email is considered activated from the moment the ID card is issued.

The official email address of a legal entity, state bodies and local government bodies consists of a combination of the code of the given legal entity (state or local government body) and the domain “@e-citizen.am”.

According to the RA Government Decree No. 1385-N dated November 12, 2015, the manager of the official email system is EKENG CJSC.

Source https://www.ekeng.am/hy/nid