OAS Representative – Starret Greene
Basseterre, St. Kitts – Nevis
September 16, 2013 (CUOPM)
The modernisation process of the Federation’s Civil Registry is moving forward at a satisfactory pace.
According to the St. Kitts based Representative of the Organisation of American States (OAS), Mr. Starret Greene, implementation of the project commenced on March 18, 2013, when a team of OAS technicians joined their local counterparts in the Federation to set up the requisite equipment and to provide training to a group of data entry clerks and a scanning technician.
He disclosed that the workers were hired, under the terms of the project, to digitalize the vital records of birth and deaths, dating back to 1859 and those of marriages as well, dating back to 1885.
Mr. Greene said that the records of the Civil Registry were stored in hundreds of books in a vault at the Registry Headquarters.
The OAS Diplomat explained that digitalizing the data involved the application of a Computer Software called the Caribbean Civil Registry and Identity System (CCRIS) that was tailored to meet the specific needs of the Civil Registry of St. Kitts and Nevis.
In providing a concise overview of the process, Mr. Greene said that a “bookdrive” scanner was set up to scan the data from each of the books in the vault; the scanning technician, via electronic means, then distributed the said data to each of the clerks who, after a series of steps, including a very important procedure called verification, organized the data within a given template containing various fields.
The project is a collaborative effort of the OAS and the Government of the Federation of St. Kitts and Nevis, through its Ministry of Health.
Mr. Greene concluded by noting that phase one of the project, that for the most part involved the digitalization of the data, was likely to continue for at least 12 months.
Representative Greene also noted that the implementation of this technical cooperation activity was part of a sub-regional exercise that involved other islands such as Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Grenada, St. Lucia, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines and fell within the broader OAS Universal Civil Identity Program of the Americas (PUICA).