License verification and online renewal

A license is a document, plate, or tag issued as proof of legal permission to work in a profession or own something. Many professional fields, such as engineering, medicine, and education, require that individuals obtain a specific level of education to become a licensed practitioner of the trade. In addition, a number of these occupations require that licensed professionals pursue regular continuing education to maintain their certification. For example, to perform work, an electrician needs an electrical license, a refrigerator repair man might need a mechanical license, a pharmacist must have a license to dispense medications with an additional requirement of continuing education to keep the license current, a business owner must have an operating license, and everyone who drives needs a drivers license.

To keep licenses current, licensed professionals can renew licenses through the agency and online through Citizen Access. Some licenses may require education, continuing education or a passing score on an exam. For more information on how to integrate education with the licensing process, see Certifications and education. Citizen Access validates license information regularly so that only those registered public users with a valid license can perform tasks. This chapter provides all of those areas in Citizen Access where you can run validation scripts.

Because education is a pre-requisite for all renewals, you can configure the online renewal process independent of the education module. This chapter explains the online renewal process and verification tasks.

To set up the license verification, the online renewal, and the education functionality, the best practice is to refer to the implementation questions and tasks in Renew and Verify Licenses in Implementation Planning. The questions help you assess the record type features you want to make available to the public. Licenses provides a comprehensive configuration list for record processing functionality, including dependent settings outside of this Creating Records chapter.