State Education Department

Use of Information Technology for Professional Licensing and Renewal

The State Education Department licenses practitioners in 47 professions, such as medicine, nursing, engineering, architecture, accounting, pharmacy and social work. We examined whether the Department was making optimal use of information technology to minimize the cost and expedite the processing time of the license application and renewal processes. We found that the Department had not made optimal use of available technology, as the application and renewal processes were still costly, labor-intensive, paper driven, mail-in processes. In 1998, the Department initiated an Online Licensing Project to expand its use of technology; the Project was supposed to be completed in 2001, but we found that it had been delayed and was still ongoing in June 2006. We identified a number of weaknesses in the Department’s management and oversight of the Project, and recommended that certain improvements be made in the Department’s project management practices.

We also examined whether the license fees were sufficient to support all processing costs and were used only for authorized license-related activities. We found that the fees were sufficient to support costs and were used for authorized purposes only.

For a complete copy of Report 2006-S-22 click here.
For a copy of the 90-day response click here.