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Secretary of State
Grayson Launches New Service to Increase Transparency
(Frankfort, KY) Want to know what final action the Governor took on your favorite legislation? It is now easier than ever to find out if a bill has been signed into law thanks to a new notification system launched by Kentucky Secretary of State Trey Grayson. Constituents can now sign up to receive email notifications or Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds to know when the governor has signed or vetoed legislation and filed it with the Secretary of State.
“My office worked diligently over the last five years to make state government transparent and accessible,” said Secretary of State Trey Grayson. “We now make millions of documents available online with nearly all new filings made available in near real time.”
The new service is free and allows constituents to receive emails either at the time each action is taken, on a daily basis, or a weekly basis. Constituents can also use RSS readers so that the information is displayed on websites and personal homepages.
This notification service follows the launch of a corporate notification service last fall which allows citizens to receive an automatic notification any time there is a change in the record of a business entity that is filed with the Secretary of State. The system is the result of in-house development by Office of the Secretary of State programmers at no additional cost to the Commonwealth.
Grayson was the first Secretary of State in Kentucky to make the Enacted Legislation available online in 2004. At that time, citizens could go online to search, in near real-time, legislation filed by the Governor.
Taking office five years ago, Secretary Grayson became known as an innovator and transparency champion. Since that time, the Office launched over 25 new online services. Earlier this year, Grayson launched FastTrack, an online business registration system that reduces the number of days it takes for companies to begin conducting business in Kentucky.
Now, a vast majority of services that the Office provides can be found online. Currently, three million documents are available on the Secretary of State’s website, and nearly all new filings are made available online in near real time.
In addition to providing more transparency, this new service will also reduce the amount of staff time dedicated to providing copies of enacted legislation or responding to requests about when filings occur.
“These latest changes will not only serve as a great benefit to the constituents of our office, but they will allow us to use our personnel more efficiently in the wake of the deep cuts our office has experienced over the last 14 months,” remarked Grayson.
Grayson progressively reduced the size and cost of the office during his term. Since Grayson assumed office in 2004, the office reduced its number of full-time employees by 12.20%, eliminated nearly all part-time employees, reduced its operating budget by 9.79%, and consolidated the number of physical offices from two to one.
“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 made to this office are the kind of transformations that government should be making in the 21st Century, where we do more with less by creating a 24-hour a day online service center.”
To register for the new service, please visit www.sos.ky.gov/notificationservices.
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