The three year project, called Digitisation of Vital Events (DoVE) is part of the strategy to modernise civil registration. The computerised record of all vital events will enable a more efficient service for people buying certificates. This project will deliver significant efficiencies in the production of certificates, moving from a labour intensive manual process to a streamlined automated process. The ONS received more than 2 million applications for certificates last year. Carrie Armitage, Project Director from ONS said: "It is essential to create new solutions to save time and money and give better service to the public, particularly as there is a growing number of applications for certificates."
Ian Tait, Operation Related Services Director for Siemens Business Services said: "Being part of a project with such a huge scope and historical value is very exciting. We were able to prove that Siemens Business Services has the capabilities to undertake this project with extremely high quality and security standards at every stage of this project."
The microfilm archive of the paper records dating back to 1837 is held at the ONS in Southport, Merseyside. The microfilm cassettes will be taken to the Siemens Document Scanning Centre in Beeston, Nottinghamshire. All 80,000 microfilms will be scanned and encrypted and the images transmitted securely to the Siemens Business Process Operation Centre in India for data capture.
High targets for completeness, accuracy and quality must be met and this will be managed from the UK based Centre of Excellence co-located at the ONS in Southport. When the records meet the stringent quality standards the completed digitised records and images will then be returned to ONS. It is planned that all certificates will be digitised by 2008.
Quelle: Publictechnology, 03.08.2005
