Secretary of State Mary Herrera said she expected her office's Web site to be online and fully functional by Thursday evening, a week after it first crashed.

Outside experts including from the Department of Information Technology have been working on the site after a recent security review — part of a computer network upgrade — found several vulnerabilities that in part led to the problem.

The office has declined to specify what the vulnerabilities are.

The Web site hosts information for all kinds of users, from business-partnership information to voter-registration information, campaign-finance reports and lobbyist registrations, as well as trademarks and agricultural-liens information.

Herrera admitted it was inconvenient for users but said the problem happened at a slow time of the year for the office.

"I feel good this happened now," she said. "It's an off (election) year, it's July, it's summer, this was going to have to be done," Herrera said.

While the site was down, staff had to process transactions by hand, she said.

But, she said, the trouble was worth it.

"It's a blessing after all. Yeah, we went down, but at least now we feel good that everything was fully secured."

The problem also temporarily disabled some computers in the Secretary of State's Office, something Deputy Secretary of State Francisco Trujillo said was related to the network upgrade.

Lawmakers and users are irked about the problem, which isn't the first glitch with the site. In the past several years, hundreds of thousands of dollars have been allocated for the site, which has lacked key functions, such as searchable campaign-finance records.

Meanwhile, a database developer at the office, Brad Allen, remained on paid administrative leave Thursday, Trujillo said. Trujillo has said the leave is not related to any kind of disciplinary action but declined to discuss the matter further.

Contact Kate Nash at 986-3036 or knash@sfnewmexican.com. Read her blog at www.greenchilechatter.com.