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Electronic Secretaries

The Office of the Secretary of State performs a wide range of functions, many of which are migrating online.

If you want to take a virtual tour of the Georgia State Capitol, pay a visit to Secretary of State Cathy Cox's Web site. Click on the tour link and you'll get an inside look at the capitol, its architecture, history and art, led by an animated figure of Secretary Cox, literally pointing the way.

The tour is amusing, but the secretary's Web site is not just for entertainment. In fact, it was selected last year as the best executive branch Web site in the nation by the Council of State Governments. Besides providing historical and archival information about Georgia in a well-designed format, the site offers what a growing number of secretary of state Web sites are doing in terms of e-government: an online filing and payment system for corporate registration, searchable databases for company entities, professional licensing services, as well as a broad range of information on voting and elections, including campaign finance information.

In North Carolina, the secretary of state's online services for businesses are so popular they are the first thing visitors see when they log on to the state's Web portal. "It's a point of pride for us to be selected as two of the five options out there in your face, so to speak, as far as what the state is doing," said Secretary of State Elaine Marshall.

The e-government revolution in state government has profoundly affected a number of agencies and operations. Secretaries of state throughout the nation have been quick to embrace technologies that support the varied duties handled by their offices that include everything from state libraries to legislative record keeping. But it's their work in the area of elections and business licensing, registration and regulation that has seen the biggest transformation, thanks to the Internet.

Just over half the states now allow either online searching or filing of uniform commercial code (UCC) information, according the Center for Digital Government, the knowledge-management and research division of e.Republic. And one-third of all secretary of state offices allow businesses to register online.

Nowhere is this impact of e-government more evident than in Georgia where the state's 360,000 corporate registrants are listed in an online database, which is available for searching. In 2000, e-commerce revenue from corporation transactions was $1.8 million. During the first 60 days of 2001, the rate of growth was 200 percent higher than the same period the previous year, according to Kara Sinkule, a spokesperson for the secretary of state. She added that checking the status of a corporate name registration now takes one day instead of three weeks.

Users of the secretary of state's Web site also can search the database to check for court orders against licensees or whether a person is properly licensed. New software will enable professionals who are regulated by the state to apply for and renew their licenses online.

In North Carolina, the secretary of state's most popular service is its searchable database of corporate names and registered agents. And like Georgia, businesses in the Tarheel State can file their UCC information and pay fees over the Internet as well. In California, online services for the state's businesses are currently limited to information and database searches. But the state has signed a contract with portal developer National Information Consortium to automate all corporate filings, including payments. "Our goal is have 90 percent of all transactions on the Internet within five years," said Alfred Charles, assistant secretary of state.

Impact of Automation

To encourage the use of its online services, California's Office of the Secretary of State cut certain fees it once charged for paper-based customer service transactions, a risky move since the office depends on fees for its funding. But it found that the online service has encouraged more businesses to file and pay for other fee-based services, thus offsetting any loss of revenue, according to Charles. In addition, fewer staff are needed to perform routine transactions and tasks.

In Georgia, automation of business services has led to a staff reduction and a modest cut in costs, according to Sinkule. Those cost savings are expected to continue as more services migrate to the Internet. North Carolina has felt the strain of handling numerous telephone queries dissipate once the secretary of state's Web site took over many of the routine functions.

"We've diverted so many of those calls to the Web site because it's self-service and the information and services are available during non-business hours," Marshall explained. Shifting services online has also strengthened backend operations while spurring greater efficiencies in how staff interface with the public, since they no longer have to spend limited resources answering routine queries.

More Services

Similar benefits have occurred in California, which has created perhaps the most sophisticated online election and voting service for state government. Want to find out who is certified and running for an elected office in the upcoming campaign? The answers to that and information about voter initiatives are on the secretary's Web site.

But the most compelling piece of the Web-based election service is the vast database of information on campaign and lobbying information now online. Voters can find out how big the war chest is for Gov. Gray Davis' upcoming gubernatorial race, who is contributing the money and how it's being spent. They can also find out who the state's lobbyists are, who has hired them and how they are paid.

During the primary elections in March, Californians were able to get real-time updates on election results at the secretary's Web site. "Actually the media were the most frequent user of the site on election night," said Charles. He added that the secretary's office also used its e-mail system to push results out to a list of subscribers, as soon as polls closed and vote counts were available.

The impact of online election and campaign information has been phenomenal. Routine calls from voters with questions have dropped 90 percent, according to Charles. In addition, candidates submit campaign finance information electronically, eliminating what was once a huge paper burden. As a result, staff has been retrained to perform tasks of greater value as the Internet takes on more routine work.

In Georgia, a similar phenomenon has occurred with the secretary of state's election service. Voters can locate their polling precinct online and can even download a voter registration form. The media can browse through campaign disclosure information about the state's constitutionally elected officials. By shifting all of this routine, but highly popular, information into an electronic format, secretaries of state make more efficient use of limited resources and staff time.

Gauging the Future

Such a transformation isn't easy. Charles points out that campaign finance forms could be the most complex public documents ever devised. "Trying to convert a paper document into an electronic format that is intuitive to read is very hard," he explained.

Then there's the need to market these electronic services to an audience used to doing things by paper or phone. State government has limited resources for outreach, whether it is to alert voters to the campaign finance information now on the Web or to persuade businesses they should file their UCC information electronically -- and pay that way, as well -- instead of relying on paper. At the same time, it is far better for staff to embrace the new technology on their own terms, rather than being forced to use it. Overcoming resistance to internal cultural change can be just as daunting as convincing companies they have a compelling reason to change their business processes to file their UCC information electronically.

But those issues may be small compared to lies ahead for the nation's secretaries of state. Still undecided is the issue of national standards for business and UCC filings. Currently, corporations, such as the Bank of America, have to learn how to file those documents 50 different ways to meet the requirements of the 50 states.

That just won't do in today's economy, where time is money, and distances and geography no longer have meaning. Key to meeting these challenges is the standardization of how information is filed, according Georgia's Marshall. "The more states have consistent filing requirements, the easier it will be for them to get capital into the hands of the people who need capital for economic development," she said. "Right now, we're just at the infancy stage in terms of standardization."
With more than 20 years of experience covering state and local government, Tod previously was the editor of Public CIO, e.Republic’s award-winning publication for information technology executives in the public sector. He is now a senior editor for Government Technology and a columnist at Governing magazine.