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Secretary of State
FastTrack Business Registration System Receives International Award
(Frankfort, KY) Once again, the Office of the Secretary of State’s online services have been recognized as tops in their class – except this time, the recognition is taking on an international flair. The Office has received the prestigious “2009 International Association of Commerce Administrators (IACA) Merit Award” for its FastTrack Business Registration System. The award comes just five months after the launch of FastTrack, an online system for customers to file business entities online.
“While I am proud to have Kentucky recognized for FastTrack, I am even more excited that this online system provides Kentuckians with a faster way to start their businesses.” said Secretary of State Trey Grayson. “Kentucky is an even greater place to do business because innovations such as FastTrack tear down bureaucratic red tape and allow businesses to prosper.”
FastTrack allows a business entity to file its formation papers with the Secretary of State via the internet. Upon its initial launch, FastTrack allows Domestic Corporations and Limited Liability Companies to file online, but will be expanded in the future to include other business entities. Since its launch in January, over 1,800 companies have registered through FastTrack, representing 20% of those filings.
The Merit Award, given for innovation and efficiency, was presented at this year’s IACA’s Conference in Denver, Colorado. Because the system is intuitive to Kentucky law, it has reduced filer error rates to just 6% as compared to 30% for paper filers. Business can be started in a matter of minutes with FastTrack as opposed to the several days that it may take for a paper filing, due to the transport time via the postal service or other carrier.
FastTrack has delivered greater efficiency to not only business filers but to the Office of the Secretary of State, as well. Online filings are easier to process and cost less than a traditional paper filing. In addition, hundreds of hours of staff time have been saved because of the reduced workload on staff.
FastTrack’s development is one of the most significant online services to be launched by the Kentucky Office of the Secretary of State, since it first put its business database online ten years ago. The service is part of the Office’s focus to become more economically and environmentally friendly, while providing greater accessibility and customer service to constituents. Just last month, the Office was recognized by the Government Technology and the Center for Digital Government’s “Best of Kentucky 2009 Technology Awards” with the “Best in Online Services Award.”
“It is our responsibility to provide the most efficient and accessible service, in the most environmentally friendly way possible,” said Secretary Grayson. “The changes we have made to this office are the kind of transformations that government should be making in the 21st Century, where we do more with less, all the while saving taxpayer dollars.”
During Grayson’s tenure in office, he has progressively reduced the size and cost of the office. Since Grayson assumed office in 2004, the office has reduced its number of full-time employees by over 12% through attrition, reduced its operating budget by nearly 10%, and consolidated the number of physical offices from two to one.
In addition to the IACA award and the “Best of Kentucky Award,” since the Office redesigned the website in 2005, the site has been recognized with several international awards for best government websites. It has also been called the “best business website” in Kentucky by Business Lexington
To view the FastTrack system, please visit www.sos.ky.gov/fasttrack.
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IACA is a leading professional association for government administrators for business organization and secured transaction record systems at the state, provincial, territorial, and national level. IACA members include government agencies administering business entity regulations in the United States, Canada, the European Union, New Zealand, and Australia. For more information, please visit www.iaca.org.
FastTrack was built through a partnership with Kentucky.gov, which also maintains many state government website’s including the Commonwealth’s official website at www.kentucky.gov. Kentucky.gov was built and is marketed, operated, and maintained by Kentucky Interactive, LLC, a Frankfort-based subsidiary of eGovernment firm NIC (Nasdaq:EGOV). NIC manages more eGovernment services than any provider in the world. The company helps government communicate more effectively with citizens and businesses by putting essential services online. NIC provides eGovernment solutions for 2,600 state and local agencies that serve more than 71 million people in the United States. Through this partnership, the cost of building the website was essentially free except for staff time used to seamlessly apply the application into the Office of the Secretary of State Business Database.
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