Case Study: Virginia DPOR Licensee achieves rapid digital licensing with Merit

Rapid, secure digital licensing for Virginia's professionals

The Virginia Department of Professional and Occupational Regulation (DPOR) needed to modernize its paper-based and siloed system for managing over 100 professional license types. Its challenge was to issue credentials and take disciplinary actions more quickly for hundreds of thousands of professionals, a process hampered by manual work and slow legacy technology. The agency partnered with Merit to implement its verified identity platform.

Merit's solution digitized and interconnected DPOR’s licensing process, which is fully supported by its Software with a Service offering. This enabled the agency to reduce credential issuance time from 2-3 weeks to just one day, issuing over 200,000 licenses. The platform also allowed for rapid emergency response, as Merit remotely updated over 20,000 expiring licenses within 24 hours during the COVID-19 state of emergency, allowing essential workers to continue without interruption.

Virginia DPOR Licensee

Mary Broz-Vaughan

Director of Virginia’s Department of Professional and Occupational Regulation