Professional Business and Licensing Service Outage at DOL

February 7, 2022

During the week of Jan. 24, the Washington Department of Licensing (DOL) was notified of suspicious activity involving professional and occupational license data. They immediately shut down their Professional Online Licensing and Regulatory Information System (POLARIS). According to their website, there is no indication that DOL data was affected, but POLARIS remains down.

What you should business owners who need to renew a license do while POLARIS remains down?

First and foremost, DOL stated that they will NOT fine, penalize or sanction a person for failing to renew their license during the POLARIS system shutdown. However, you are required to fill out an Intent to Renew form. Once that is submitted, they can ensure they will not take action against your license based on its expiration date while POLARIS is down.

There is no set date that the POLARIS system will be back online and working properly. So, in the meantime, if you have any questions, please visit https://www.dol.wa.gov/outage/index.html or contact DOL at 855.568-2052 between 8 a.m. – 5 p.m. daily.