The population of New Zealand is 3.9 million. In 1998 the New Zealand Registry chose Axiell to manage the vital events requirements of the entire nation after closing external data collection agencies. There are 75 concurrent users who register approximately 110,000 vital events per year. At present there are approximately 11 million records on-line.
The Registry’s business goals include:
- Back-capturing all historic records (1848 to 1997).
- Collecting all new birth, death and marriage registrations on an electronic system.
- Providing certificates from an electronic system.
- Providing on-line access to index information by approved Government Agencies.
KE Software* has been fundamental in assisting the Registry to meet its strategic business goals.
Back-capture
The back-capture project took 3 years to complete and resulted in an index record and image of the registration of all birth, death and marriage records back to 1848. Integration of Axiell’s index and image databases allows for an image to be displayed on screen alongside its corresponding index record. This allows the index record to be updated with more information in order to facilitate certificate requests, record updates and corrections.
New Registrations
All new birth, death and marriage registrations are electronically loaded into the system Axiell implemented. Death and Hospital Notification of Births have been captured at source for many years via secure web applications. More recently the Registry launched Birth Registrations Online and was immediately receiving over 85% of all birth registrations from parents via the online channel. Marriage registrations are keyed by an external keying Bureau and as each record is loaded it is verified against strict validation conditions to ensure data integrity.
All new birth registrations are verified against hospital records (also electronically stored).
All new death registrations are matched to their corresponding birth registration, if held in full data form on the system.
Certificate Production
Each year the Registry issues around 220,000 certificates. Approximately half of these are issued from new registrations (which are immediately available). The other half have their index record dynamically updated using the image of the registration so that the certificate may be produced. It is expected that over time the majority of index records will be fully digitized in this manner.
Historical unrestricted Birth, Death, and Marriage records may be searched online via the BDM Historical website, which allows genealogists and the general public to research and order copies of historic registration records. Birth certificates may be ordered by parents at the time the birth is registered online.
Government Agencies
Legislation has been passed to allow specified Government Agencies on-line access to index information held by the Registry.
The Registry actively captures consent from the applicable parties at the time of event registration to enable registration data to be shared with other Government agencies to streamline access to Government services. For example, when a parent registers the birth of a child, they can consent to the birth registration information being passed to the Inland Revenue Department to streamline the process for the child to receive an IRD number (tax number). Likewise if the parent is on a benefit, they can consent to the birth registration information being passed to the Ministry of Social Development to streamline any change to benefit entitlements for the parent.
Future Business
Future business revolves around:
- increasing access to online services for capturing core registration events
- extending Government Agencies’ access to indexes
- making a version of the indexes available on-line for genealogists and other users.
Access to all index information will be integrated with an electronic order form so that customers can purchase certificates and imaged copies of the registrations on-line.
*Now Axiell