Most banks have safety deposit boxes for the safekeeping of one’s valuables. Often those consist of share certificates, bonds, titles (certificates of ownership), legal documents, and other forms of valuable paper. In order to access the contents of your box, one has to physically make a trip to the bank, get the document and have a certified copy made, then take (or mail) the copy to a third party, etc. This is a time-consuming and redundant process in today’s day and age, and it does not work well if you need access to your documents after hours, or while you are out of town.
Suggestion: Banks (or some trusted and long-lasting equivalent) should add the Electronic Safety Deposit Box to their array of services. One should be able to make copies of your valuable documents and add them to this online site, with the institution certifying the authenticity of such copies, and possibly even guaranteeing that the original is in safekeeping in the customer’s real safety deposit box. Of course, the customer should have a granular level of control – regarding who should be able to access individual documents (via access codes), and also the level of access the people with these codes should have (read, write, update, delete).
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For customers, this will open up many possibilities. In addition to safeguarding and virtualizing your important papers, one could use this online tool for:
1) Medical Records. You can require your medical suppliers to post your medical history here, leaving you in control of your personal information. You can carry a tag around your wrist with instructions on how to access your records in case of an emergency.
2) Backup Storage. Many online backup sites have come and gone. Most of the larger banks have extensive storage and retrieval systems, and are ideally suited to provide such a service. Since information is money, this service should fit much better with banks.
3) Audit Trail. Due to the Internet, there is a whole new class of interpersonal transactions between parties who do not know each other, for instance on eBay or Amazon’s Z-Shops. These larger companies supply such audit trails through their systems. However, in many cases there is a need for individuals to be able to capture conversations in chat rooms, bulletin boards, or via instant messenger applications.
For banks, this should provide some new ways to make money. After all, such a system could be both subscription based (for basic functionality) and fee based (for the use of advance functions – like certifying a specific document).
4) The USPS would be an excellent infrastructure to support such an idea. The USPS is a quasi-federal government entity, which would provide credibility. The USPS should offer a free email account for every person in the US (should be another Why Not Idea). For example, they currently track every mail address for every person, so the email address format could be your_name@usps-email-address.us. You can have it forwarded to any email address you like (saves the USPS storage). The USPS can generate revenue by selling storage on their encrypted system. So, if you have a scanned document you want to store, such as a medical record or deed of trust, you send it to that email address, it's electronically 'stamped' by the USPS, and stored in their repository. The electronic Document Management System (e-DMS) they would use for their repository would support auditing, version control, transaction logs, and would be compliant with HIPPA, Sarbanes-Oxley, FDA21, and other federal requirements. This idea would support emails as legal forms of communication. As with most physical safe-deposit boxes, the owner would specify a beneficiary, in case of their death. For people who keep all their userIDs and passwords in electronic form could save that information as well.