The COVID-19 pandemic has triggered isolation measures that have led many public and private organisations to adopt and increase their reliance on teleworking.

Our latest research looks at measures taken across the Americas region that facilitate  teleworking, including the use of electronic signatures.

Before the coronavirus outbreak, most of the researched countries had already adopted laws and/or policy initiatives that allowed for a quick shift to teleworking.

Having a regulatory framework for the use of electronic signatures was recognised as one key element to ensure that public and private organisations could continue to perform their activities with full legal effects, with all of the researched countries already having such a framework in place.

American countries are also adopting new provisional measures to promote teleworking when feasible, to complement the isolation measures taken in response to the COVID-19 pandemic:

• No country makes teleworking mandatory but companies and government agencies encourage it whenever it is feasible.
   
• Public key infrastructure (PKI) authorities are granting new licences to certification bodies, with a reminder that during the crisis it is possible to sign labour contracts by electronic signature.

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