Transform your vital records registration processes

Digitise | Store | Automate | Unlock

Challenge

Finding what you need when you need it most

Registry offices typically cover a range of civil registration services. They have the responsibility to deliver copies of official documents to citizens such as birth, marriage and death certificates, and in some cases they are the ultimate repository of these records. Historically, documents were hand written and stored in physical registers. More recently, documents were machine printed. Public offices deal with high volumes of applications for hard copies of registration records, casework and despatches, often involving laborious, time consuming and expensive tasks which were impossible to standardise given the variety of information and formats of information. Because of these challenges, more recently the EU has requested public offices to become more agile and implement a digital first mentality with the aim to inhibit efforts to be highly responsive to the public.

Additionally, vital records residing in registry offices hold data that is critical for countering fraud. In order to actively counteract crime, the accuracy of records is essential. Digitisation is key in protecting physical records from decay, loss or damage due to unforeseen causes, ensuring accuracy and hence contributing to saving public funds. Lastly, registry offices need to manage and keep track of citizens’ requests usually coming in multiple forms (in person requests, as well as via letter, email or through websites) while still meeting the tight response deadlines for such requests.

Solution

Unlocking data value through insightful decisions

Iron Mountain InSight® is a purpose-built software as a service solution that combines scanning of physical documents and digital storage in a secure cloud repository accessible through Iron Mountain Connect™, the web-based customer hub. This scalable solution helps you manage the entire information lifecycle with a proven chain of custody. This ensures transparency of where your physical and digital assets are at all times to elevate the end customer or public’s experiences.

Additionally creating a repository of all requested data electronically allowing public offices to provide back previously requested documents simply and at a reduced cost.

How does it work?

• Digitise 

Digitise and index different types of documents, from birth certificates to death certificates, whether in bound books, folders or in microform, including physical documentation and back-office operational files — with quality controls, security access protocols, and intelligent workflows. Leveraging optical character recognition (OCR) technology, all documents are completely searchable by text or index and available in PDF, TIFF, and Office formats in 50+ languages.

• Store

Store Encrypted Files in a Secure Repository — Electronic records will be encrypted at rest and during transmission across a secure network with access restricted by encryption keys. Role-based permissions enable authorised users to access only the information that they need, wherever and whenever they need it. Public offices such as registry offices have the ability to share files with internal and external users as links and email attachments for view or download depending on the access easily granted to the recipient of the electronic data.

• Automate

Elevate registry office activities and citizens experience with a more efficient and transparent process. Document automation provides a centralised location to store and classify digital records for operational efficiency. You also have the ability to automatically apply document retention rules to help you comply with data privacy regulations.

Scanned documents and images are ingested on a centralised platform through workflow and compared against the existing Register’s dataset in order to match the image with the relevant digital record. Utilisation of ML processing enables all relevant information to be extracted from the image and allows for records assigned to the same individual to be matched to create a digital identity.

If required, a quality control (QC) check can be implemented in order to ensure a successful match between a scanned image and a record, and/or to extract missing information. Records which are rejected in the QC process or that generate a business exception (e.g. duplicates) are passed to the exception handling queue. These will be dealt with by Iron Mountain teams according to the agreed business rules or, where the exception falls outside of set business rules are placed in the customer exception queue.

The updated record database containing both a unique pointer to the image of the record (and location for complex images) can then be ingested into the Iron Mountain InSight Content Services Platform for end to end information management. Alternatively, the extracted metadata can be ingested into an existing content repository system.

By implementing this solution, citizens’ requests can be managed automatically. This results in a more efficient, cost effective process for government entities and a better customer experience.

• Unlock

Gain visibility and make sense out of large volumes of data and act quickly upon citizens requests to access their records. By implementing Iron Mountain InSight Content Services Platform, dashboards provide a visual display of data and metrics for powerful insights that help gain better control over most requested records. The primary data fields, that in combination create a unique reference for each record, are matched against the existing public offices’ data in order to link each record with its corresponding data set. Maintaining a digital database on a content services platform will enable significant cross government savings from verifying passport applications against registry-held registration data, rather than requiring applicants to submit hard copy documents each time.

What you gain

• Improve citizens customer experience and satisfaction.
• Full chain of custody across the entire process ensuring all activity is auditable and traceable.
• Match a scanned image to a digital record more quickly and cost effectively.
• Support general registers digitisation strategies.
• Secure and well managed content with the ability to adapt to future needs.
• Improve the accuracy for citizen’s certificates, including handwritten documents.
• Counter fraudulent activities successfully and saving public money.