The Home Office has set out plans for the transformation of the Civil Registration Service, including new digital services for life events, scanning and transcription and viewing records.
It has published the appointment letter to Carly Blay, deputy director of civil registrations and citizenship, as senior responsible owner of the programme, which is focused on the General Register Office Agency and is planned to run until 2030.
The programme is aimed at moving the viewing and buying of records on births, deaths and marriages from a paper based to online service. It will also involve scanning and transcribing the remaining microfilm records and contribute to a transition to net zero carbon emissions.
Five main projects have been identified, including the development of a Digital Registration Service for life events, providing a choice of online, telephone and face-to-face registrations where allowed under legislation.
This will be accompanied by the creation of a new centralised data store for all the information, and a project named Products and Data from the Record for the sharing of life event data with other government departments to deliver services.
Scanning and transcription
The digitisation of scanning and transcription will involve creating a digital image of original certificates and transcribing the key data files, and the Online View project will enable users to view historic records online and purchase copies or PDFs of certificates.
The latter will depend on a change in legislation. It was included within the Data Protection and Digital Information Bill that was dropped in Parliament’s ‘wash up’ shortly before this month’s general election.
A full time programme director will be appointed to lead the effort.
