Births, Deaths, Marriages conversion impacts service

By RICHARD WOOD

The centralisation of the Department of Internal Affairs' Births, Deaths and Marriages records has led to a significant drop in service levels, in certain circumstances.

Specifically this applies if a birth or marriage was registered locally at the office where a request for a certificate is being made.

Previously counter services could turn around such local requests for certificates in less than an hour, because they had the registers on hand.

But such requests are now required to go through a centralised office. At the moment, for example, this means a request for a birth certificate can take eight to ten days. This can be reduced to three to five days for urgent cases, and under certain circumstances can arrive the next day.

The current situation has arisen because, progressively from 1998, the register books have been taken out of local offices to Upper Hutt to be entered into a developing central database. This database will eventually house all Births, Deaths, and Marriages information and provide expanded electronic

services.

This process was completed last June for data back to 1935, and is due for completion this June for data back to 1848. Entries from 1998 have been entered directly.

Department of Internal Affairs spokesperson Tony Wallace confirmed the drop in service levels for local requests, but said those who weren't born or married locally to where they make the request are better off.

This is because of the added ability to order over a freephone service and use a credit card. Call centre hours were also extended last week to include early evening and Saturday.

Mr Wallace makes no promises about when, or if, service time will ever be back to what it was for the local request. Charges for services were raised in October last year, the reason given at the time was to provide funding for the database development.

"The ultimate target is to provide the best possible service to all our customers, realistically under the centralised structure," he said.

Mr Wallace said the centralised database is part of a system that is aimed to ultimately reduce the need for certificates. Besides online access, it will include online verification, by duly authorised agencies. This verification service has been developed but not implemented because the privacy implications are still being worked through, he said.