The Digital Signature Algorithm (DSA) was published by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in the Digital Signature Standard (DSS), which is a part of the U.S. government's Capstone project. DSS was selected by NIST, in cooperation with the NSA, to be the digital authentication standard of the U.S. government. The standard was issued on May 19, 1994.

DSA is based on the discrete logarithm problem and derives from cryptosystems proposed by Schnorr and ElGamal. It is for authentication only. For a detailed description of DSA.

In DSA, signature generation is faster than signature verification, whereas in RSA, signature verification is faster than signature generation (if the public and private exponents, respectively, are chosen for this property, which is the usual case). NIST claims that it is an advantage of DSA that signing is faster, but many people in cryptography think that it is better for verification to be the faster operation.