David Y. Ige

HONOLULU – The state Department of Commerce and Consumer Affairs’ (DCCA) Business Registration Division (BREG) won an International Association of Commercial Administrators (IACA) Merit Award for its “AlertMe” services.

The award was presented to Hawaii at the 38th Annual IACA conference, which was held in Savannah, GA from May 17-21, 2015, where a select panel of experts carefully reviewed each submission and assigned a score in the areas of effectiveness, originality, significance and transferability, and lessons learned.

“I’d like to commend the hardworking staff in our Business Registration Division for this well-deserved award,” said DCCA Director Catherine Awakuni Colón. “The system was designed as a direct response to the needs of our customers.”

“We are constantly striving to make business registration in Hawaii quick and simple,” said Securities Commissioner Ty Nohara, who heads BREG. “This award is a reflection of our commitment to the growing needs of our customers and our goal to make doing business in Hawaii easier for everyone.”

In December 2014, BREG launched alertme.ehawaii.gov, which offers MyBusiness Alerts and MyBusiness Reminders, which are mobile-friendly notification services.  Through these new services, customers can virtually monitor and manage their businesses at low cost and with high efficiency. Through MyBusiness Alerts, consumers can sign up to receive near real-time emails and text messages that will notify them when someone makes a change to a company’s official state business registration record.

The AlertMe services were created to address customer needs and demands.  BREG staff reports an increase in notification requests for a number of reasons including: urgent business status, watching the business, identity theft, and internal dispute.  With this system, BREG now has the advanced technology to notify businesses through text or email messages, as changes occur instead of only once a day.

The AlertMe notification services are one of the few government services in the nation to offer text message notifications.

IACA is a professional association for government administrators of business organization and secured transaction record systems at the state, provincial, territorial, and national level in any jurisdiction which has or anticipates development of such systems.

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Photo caption (L-R):
Teri Berschneider, Hawaii Information Consortium, Michael V. Smith, 2015 IACA President, Kristyne Tanaka, BREG Documents Registration Supervisor

Media Contact:
Christine Hirasa
Communications Officer
Department of Commerce and Consumer Affairs
Phone:  (808) 586-7582
Mobile:  (808) 286-9626
Email:  [email protected]