Civil Registration Number To Strengthen Social Security, Welfare Planning

The new Civil Registration Number (CRN) developed by the Registrar General’s Department (RGD) is expected to improve planning for social security and welfare programmes.

The CRN is a code now applied to the RGD’s Electronic Birth database as part of the process of linking vital life events – birth, marriage and death.

Chief Executive Officer at the RGD, Charlton McFarlane, speaking in an interview with JIS News, said the unique CRN will identify persons through their life course.

“The benefit of this is that we will now be able to identify individuals by using the significant life events from the civil registry. This will help us to be able to tighten up our social obligations to our citizens. It will allow us greater efficiency by being able to identify persons, who would have transitioned to retirement or who would have passed on,” he said.

“I believe the Government will definitely benefit by the fact that they will now be able to have a better idea of the population for which they are planning… especially around the age of retirement. We spend a lot of resources through the National Insurance Scheme (NIS) and the Accountant General on pension funds,” Mr. McFarlane pointed out.

He contended that “many times, because there is no explicit link, we rely on life certificates to say that somebody is still alive. But once this link is complete, then these government institutions can simply connect to our systems and have that verification done instantaneously”.

Mr. McFarlane noted that the genealogy research service now offered by the RGD is expected to be enhanced by the ability to link the various life events of an individual.

Meanwhile, roughly 70 per cent of the RGD’s services are now available online, and the agency continues to look at additional services to add to its online platform.

“We are also looking to expand the options for our same-day and next-day services because right now it is only for those customers who would have already been issued a computer-generated certificate. But because we have records that are existing in digital format, we are currently working to include those records in our same-day and next-day service delivery offerings,” Mr. McFarlane told JIS News.

To access the services of the RGD or for further details, persons can visit rgd.gov.jm.