Secretary of State Issues RFI for New Business Portal

The California Secretary of State’s Office (SOS) has put out a request for information (RFI) centered on the modernization and/or replacement of its California Business Connect (CBC) online business records portal.

The office is looking for information about “off-the-shelf” solutions to replace the portal used to process and manage business filings, searches and records requests. Those requests include limited liability company (LLC), limited partnership (LP), corporation (Corp.), and Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) records.

“The SOS is exploring replacement and/or modernization options to re-evaluate the marketplace for commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) software and custom-developed solutions, and to identify software and support services that can meet current and future business and technical needs,” the RFI reads.

According to the RFI, the Secretary of State’s office processes more than 3 million business filings annually, which are accessed by approximately 400 internal users and 10,000 concurrent public users generating millions of search and records requests each year.

As part of that work, the new system will need to support several key functions, including but not limited to public access for business filings, search capabilities for business entity and lien records, application programming interface access, secure identity management, and data exchange with partners like the Franchise Tax Board.

The agency lists some of its current challenges with the system as modernization and software support, manual handling of paper submissions and requests, workflow standardization, and security and fraud prevention.

The deadline for responses is 4 p.m. Sept. 28. The point of contact for this RFI is the Contract Services division. More information about the solicitation is available via the event package.