Secretary of State
Office Website Continues to Garner Accolades

(Frankfort, KY) – When Kentucky Secretary of State Trey Grayson directed his staff to revamp his office’s website shortly after he was sworn into office in 2004, his primary focus was to make the site more accessible to constituents and to provide more online services.  What he did not envision was that the site would soon receive international recognition for its design and even serve as a model for other Secretary of State websites across the country. 

Today, Grayson announced that the site, www.sos.ky.gov, was again honored by two organizations: The International Academy of Digital Arts & Sciences and Summit International Awards.  The site was recognized as a Bronze award winner and an official honoree, respectively.  Thousands of websites were nominated for both awards from over thirty countries.

“We certainly appreciate the recognition of these esteemed organizations,” stated Grayson. “However, I am most pleased that we have an outstanding site to serve the constituents of our office.”

The office launched a redesigned site just over a year ago and has received a tremendous amount of accolades since that time. The site received the Standard of Excellence WebAward last fall and was also recognized by a columnist from BusinessLexington as the most useful site on the web for Kentucky businesses.
With the redesign, the website now offers information on all office responsibilities, including business services, elections, administrative services, land records, and executive information. The new website regularly receives over 5.9 million hits a month, a dramatic increase since the redesign of the site, making it one of Kentucky state government’s most popular sites. 

The new site also allows easy access to the office’s numerous online services and business filing forms.  Grayson noted that the office placed an emphasis on increasing online services with the redesign. 

Secretary Grayson announced several new online services since he took office such as online access to several corporate certificates that could previously only be requested by phone, including popular forms such as the Certificate of Existence, the Certificate of Authorization, and the Annual Report form and other business services information including the ability to view and print a reinstatement packet for organizations that have been administratively dissolved and statements of change of registered agent/office and for principal office.

Last year, access to portions of the Governor’s Executive Journal, final copies of enacted legislation of the Commonwealth, and Revolutionary War Patents were made available to the public via the World Wide Web.   New services for the office include a summonses tracking system and new land patent database searches for the Kentucky Land Office.

“One of my promises upon taking office was to make the Office of the Secretary of State more technologically friendly.  This new website allows constituents to access a variety of services more easily and at any time, effectively creating a 24 hour-a-day/seven day-a-week operation,” stated Grayson.

In addition to the work of the Office of the Secretary of State, the website was built in partnership with Kentucky.gov, which also built and maintains the Commonwealth’s official website at www.kentucky.gov.

The Office of the Secretary of State is entrusted with filing, maintaining and preserving the important documents and records of the Commonwealth and her people.  Access to documents not found online is available at the State Capitol Building in Frankfort, KY.

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