OAS donates equipment to Civil Registry

The Organization of American States (OAS), through its Department for Effective Public Management (DEPM), with funding from the Governments of Chile, Canada, Luxembourg and Korea{{more}}, has completed implementation of a Caribbean Civil Registry and Identity System (CCRIS) in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines.

CCRIS was developed under the OAS/DEPM’s Universal Civil Identity Program in the Americas (PUICA) to facilitate birth registration and to provide uniform vital statistics in the Eastern Caribbean. With equipment purchased by the OAS – one Book-Drive scanner, two servers, seven computer workstations, network equipment and other computer hardware components – CCRIS facilitated the scanning of the vital records maintained in ledgers at the Civil Registry’s Vault and their uploading to a central database.

From September to December 2011 and June to December 2012, the project scanned a full 100 percent of the 468 ledgers at the Civil Registry, for a total of 120,320 pages containing 614,200 birth, death, marriage, adoption and legitimization records. By December 24, 2012, it had scanned and cropped 93 percent of the scanned records and initiated data entry.

The Civil Registry is now able to view the images cropped by CCRIS in their existing application, and has the ability to image, crop and process birth, death and marriage records, along with data entry, verification, editing and printing. In addition to providing the services of experts to guide the implementation of CCRIS, the OAS has

provided: (i) The software application that served as the platform for the system. (ii) The hardware to scan the registration books in which the vital information was recorded and to enter that information in a searchable database. (iii) Technical support in setting up the hardware and installing the software. (iv)Training and salaries for a Supervisor, Scanning Technician and five Data Entry Clerks.

The OAS/DEPM is facilitating the implementation of CCRIS in six CARICOM member states of the OAS – Antigua and Barbuda, Belize, Grenada, St. Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines.

Saint Vincent and the Grenadines is the first country to complete the computerization phase and to incorporate CCRIS as an integral part of Registry operations.