Brian Clarke Registrar-General of Births, Deaths and Marriages Department of Internal Affairs

1. Digital Life Events – A view from the front Brian Clarke Registrar-General of Births, Deaths and Marriages Department of Internal Affairs

2. Births, Deaths and Marriages Births, Deaths and Marriages registers and maintains New Zealand birth, death, marriage, civil union and name change information and provides access to that information by issuing certificates and printouts. Generally, all records are now digital or partly digital: • Births and Deaths from 1848 (scanned images to 1997) • Marriages from 1843 (scanned images to 1997) • Civil unions from 2005 • Name changes (for overseas births) from 2009

3. Towards all-Digital Birth notices from hospitals and midwives (65,000) • 36% by form; 64% over the Internet (as at Feb 2010) • Future – All via the Internet Birth registration from parents (64,000) • All by form • Future – iGovt opens the door for online notifications Marriages and Civil unions (24,000) • All by form • Future – Still use forms but keyed online and at front office Deaths (29,000) • 40% by form; 60% over the Internet (as at Feb 2010) • Future – All via the Internet (except non-funeral director) Name changes for persons born overseas (2,500) • All by form as requires statutory declaration • Future – iGovt might open the door for online notifications

4. Pressure for Digital Information Individuals • Online access (e.g. genealogy) • Research • Balance against privacy concerns Government agencies • Information matching • Verification • Deceased persons • Statistical analysis Private organisations • Verification • Deceased persons

5. Challenges – Part 1 • Pre-1998 partly digital records have subset of full record so some info wanted now is not easily accessible without viewing each image i.e. no crystal ball 10 years ago when decision on which fields to back capture • Minimal transposition errors converting old hand written records to digital • Slowly converting pre-1998 records to full digital records when other maintenance carried out on that record (e.g. name change) • Digital record is expanding e.g. citizenship by birth added about 30 extra fields to a birth record

6. Challenges – Part 2 Hardware • Scanned images of older registrations recently moved from old technology CD jukebox to modern server • Maintaining seamless access during upgrades and shifts Software • 12 years since installed and was old then (update planned) • Supplied and supported from overseas, and registry specific • Keeping up with the Jones’ – benchmarking against overseas jurisdictions Production environment • Coping with planned and unplanned outages • Wellington backups each night to Auckland e.g. recent power cut caused server mother board to fail • Firewalls, internal and external protections and monitoring

7. Questions Author Megan Hutching, of the Ministry for Culture and Heritage, profiles seven people who have worked closely with the registers. They describe the evolution of record keeping from beautiful old books, painstakingly handwritten, to computerised data systems that can search millions of records and verify the details of any particular one. Available for download at www.bdm.govt.nz