Contractor in US-CA
What this register publishes today, what is missing, and the smallest change that would move it up.
What was found
A master list of every licensed contractor in the state, free, in CSV or Excel, split into three files: the licence master, workers’ compensation, and personnel. Each record carries licence number, business name, address, status, issue and expiry dates, classifications, bond and insurance. The personnel file is the interesting one, because it publishes the people attached to a licence rather than only the licence, which is the question a client is actually asking. Two limits are stated by the board itself: the data is current as of the date printed under the download link and status can change at any moment, and email addresses are withheld under the Business and Professions Code. The first of those is the freshness problem this lab writes specifications about, admitted in one line by the authority publishing the file.
What it publishes
| Check | Answer | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| A public page per licence | Yes | Gives a reader something to look at and a checker something to archive and attest against. |
| A bulk export | Yes | Lets a consumer hold the whole list instead of fetching one licence at a time, and lets anyone hash it. |
| Machine readable | Yes | A CSV or JSON rather than a page built for a browser. Decides whether checking can be automated at all. |
| Signed | No | Makes the file impossible to forge or mirror convincingly. Nothing reaches grade A without it. |
The next step
Sign the file
The export exists and is machine readable, which is the expensive part. What remains is a key and one DNS record on a domain the authority already controls, which makes the file impossible to forge and takes this row to grade A.
A grade describes a register, not the authority behind it and not the quality of its supervision. An authority can run an excellent register and still sit at grade D because it is a search form.
If this row is wrong, it gets corrected with the correction published beside it. The index is useful only if it can be argued with. Tell the lab.