The Organization of American States (OAS) has completed a project designed to facilitate birth registration and provide uniform vital statistics in Saint Lucia, as part of the organization’s Universal Civil Identity Program in the Americas (PUICA).

The OAS purchased equipment, developed software, and trained a six-member team to scan and input information from 11,050 registry books containing 258,833 pages of birth, death, marriage and baptism certificates. PUICA provided the remuneration of the team for a six-month period which concluded on June 7, 2013.

During the project, the team scanned 70 percent of birth records, 56 percent of death records, 82 percent of marriage records, and 44 percent of baptism books. The focus of the project in Saint Lucia was to capture the images in the Civil Registry records, so that the new computer application being developed by the government of Saint Lucia would be able to incorporate these images.

In addition to financing registry personnel for six months, the OAS project purchased project equipment – one Book-Drive scanner, two servers, six computer workstations, network equipment and other computer hardware components. This facilitated the scanning of the vital records maintained in ledgers at the Office of the Registrar of Civil Status, and their uploading to a central database.

The assistance to Saint Lucia was provided by the OAS Department for Effective Public Management (OAS/DEPM), with funding from the governments of Chile, Canada, Luxembourg and Korea, under the Caribbean Civil Registry and Identity System (CCRIS) of the OAS. The objective of the CCRIS is to facilitate birth registration, and to provide uniform vital statistics across the Eastern Caribbean.

The OAS/DEPM is facilitating the implementation of CCRIS in six CARICOM member states of the OAS – Antigua & Barbuda, Belize, Grenada, St. Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines.