Electronic Photography & Filming Consent Forms
This weeks Going Paperless article is looking at Electronic Photo & Filming Consent Forms and how going paperless with these types of forms has a multitude of benefits.
There are many different types of situations where you may want to take photos or videos of individuals and groups from events at your school, college, university, graduation, community event, sports event, charity event and so on. Depending on what country you live in will depend on the privacy and data protection laws associated with the photography and filming of people. In most cases you will always need to inform individuals when you are taking photos or recording videos of them, what the photos/video will be used for and in most cases you will be required to get some form of consent.
This article by no means gives advice in relation to what is required for your specific scenario and you should seek your own independent legal advice for your own situation. This article is focused on the use of technology to make the process of gaining consent as easy and efficient as possible.
Photography and Filming Consent Forms are generally still completed with pen and paper. While this method works it poses a number of issues and risks including:
- The time and cost associated with printing the forms
- Printing the correct amount of forms which often leads to wasted paper
- Difficult to read or even unreadable handwriting (we are writing less and typing more meaning handwriting is getting worse)
- Distributing the forms effectively
- Collecting all of the forms back in (and on time)
- Missing or lost forms (which could lead to Data Protection issues)
- Sorting, transporting and storing of the paper forms
We have been using Laptop’s and PC’s for decades now and with the ever increasing use of mobile technology such as Smartphones and Tablets — using paper based consent forms should be a thing of the past.
iPEGS offers an easy to use, cost effective way of creating Paperless Photo & Video Consent Forms that can can be accessed on ANY device, completed easily, signed electronically and submitted in a matter of minutes if not seconds.
Making it as easy as possible for the person completing the form is absolutely key to getting your Consent Forms submitted quickly and by using a Paperless System such as iPEGS it make this process not only easier for the end user but also for yourself — in both creating, managing, distributing and accessing your forms.
These Electronic Consent Forms can be easily distributed to large numbers of people to be completed immediately or they can be sent ahead of time — with due dates and reminders set to ensure that no one forgets to complete and submit the form on time.
Form fields can even be pre-populated making it even quicker for the end user to complete the form.
The user can opt to have a copy of the form sent to them in PDF for their own records once the form has been submitted. Completed forms can be emailed to the ‘Form Owner’ and/or they can be submitted securely to the iPEGS Web Portal where you can access, view and download the forms as and when required. No more collecting in mounds of paper, no more risk of losing the forms and no more having to store them in a filing cabinet!
The majority of us use our Smartphones on a daily if not hourly basis for all kinds activities such as shopping, banking, social media and much more — so to complete and submit a consent form electronically should be no big deal.
So the next time you are printing out dozens of Photography & Filming Consent Forms — think again…save yourself some time, save some paper, make it easy for the people completing these forms and this will be one less task to worry about.
For more information about how you can create your own electronic Photo and Video Consent Forms with iPEGS please click here.
