e-Population

Introduction

• The Registrar General's Department is responsible for the registration of births, marriages, and deaths. The records entered are maintained manually, and access to them is not provided to other government agencies, which consequently results in a duplication of effort, time, and cost.
• 'e-Population' is introduced with the objective of building an integrated foundational information system regarding every citizen of Sri Lanka, creating an efficient and reliable registration system for vital events, enhancing information sharing with government institutions by utilizing the population register, providing more comprehensive analytical capabilities related to demographic and health statistics, increasing the coverage of vital events reporting, and issuing a personal identification number for all citizens at birth.
• Fulfilling these objectives, the 'e-Population' system ensures the accuracy of data through parental verification, facilitates the searching and issuance of certificate copies from any Divisional Secretariat, reduces the need for translations, maintains the current information of citizens, and shares citizen information among institutions.

e-Population Project

The provisions of the Births and Deaths Registration Act, No. 17 of 1951 are intended for the manual registration of a birth or a death. However, handwriting errors and clerical errors are frequently found in many manually written birth and death certificates. Furthermore, the visibility of an amendment on the certificate, especially after an amendment is made to a birth certificate, is often a distressing experience for the certificate holder.

Similarly, due to the non-recording of birth, marriage, and death registration information in a database, a significant amount of time and effort has to be expended during the sharing of birth, marriage, and death information, and the ability to properly utilize such information has been hindered.

Based on these factors, under the public sector re-engineering program, the Registrar General's Department, under the technical guidance of the Information and Communication Technology Agency of Sri Lanka (ICTA), has initiated the e-Population Register program to develop a database containing civil registration information and updated data.

How it Operates

During the registration of a birth, the information contained in the declaration form accepted from the parents is entered into the e-Population Register system by the officers of the District Registrar's Division of the Divisional Secretariat. A data sheet containing the entered information is sent to the parents for verification. Thereafter, the National Birth Certificate containing the person's Sri Lanka Identity Number / My Number is issued through the database. This Sri Lanka Identity Number / My Number is obtained through the Department for Registration of Persons.

The special features contained in the National Birth Certificate scheduled to be issued through this database are as follows.

• Allocating a unique identity number as "My Number" for every birth, and since it is generated in connection with the Department for Registration of Persons, enabling the use of that number as the National Identity Card number in the future.
• Designating it as a National Birth Certificate, as this certificate is issued under the signature of the Registrar General.
• The ability to use it internationally, as this birth certificate is issued in Sinhala/English or Tamil/English languages.
• Preventing the inclusion of forged information or alteration, as the certificate includes a Quick Response (QR) code.
• Receiving higher acceptance, as it is printed on paper with special security features.

Accordingly, maintaining an officially certified and updated citizen information system will build a population register pertaining to Sri Lankans, and since it will enable the sharing of such information among government institutions, it will consequently improve the efficiency of the public sector.