By Sonya Delgado
The 20th City Council on December 12 passed the ordinance for the digitalization of the city’s local civil registry through the Civil Registration Information System (CRIS) Online.
The digitalization of government services is part of city’s initiatives under Mayor Sebastian “Baste” Duterte to improve its services.
In accordance with the ordinance, the Local Civil Registrar (LCR) will create an online register system that can safely issue civil registry papers such as birth certificates.
Councilor Bonz Andre Militar, Chair of the Committee on Information Technology, in an interview with the City Information Office (CIO) said the ordinance was made after he observed that there are still a lot of documents at the City Civil Registrar’s Office (CCRO).
“There are still a lot of manual processes, there are also a lot of documents that they need to track,” he said.
He added that the online registry system will greatly help Dabawenyos to easily and quickly retrieve copies of a documents without physically visiting the office since all hard-copy records will be converted to digital versions.
“All records that are hard copies will be converted into digital copies. Using a scanner it will be faster because all records, even from 1945, will be placed in the system,” he said.
He said a specific mechanism for submitting the civil register documents for registration will also be made available to partner organizations.
The system will also be connected to other government organizations, including the Professional Regulation Commission, the Department of Foreign Affairs, and the Philippine Statistics Authority.
Militar said civil registry digitalization will be implemented early next year.
“The system is already being developed by our City Information Technology Center (CITC), so we target to implement it early next year,” he said.