Philippines pilots new capabilities for civil registry, QR codes galore

The Philippines Statistics Authority (PSA) is piloting the country’s new civil registry system ahead of national rollout. The system gives every document – and every page – a security feature to check its authenticity.

The Civil Registry System-Information Technology Project Phase II (CRS-ITP2) is currently in pilot phase at the Civil Registry System Central Outlet in Quezon City, one of the 16 cities that make up the Metro Manila region.

New features of CRS-ITP2 include security paper, QR codes on every page of civil registry documents to verify authenticity, unique transaction numbers per document and serial numbers. Documents will also be assigned, where appropriate, a Birth Reference Number, Marriage Reference Number or Death Reference Numbers.

The new system allows citizens to acquire copies of certificates such as birth and marriage within one hour for PhP155 (US$2.75), plus further services such as authentication and premium annotation. It makes documents viewable online too, for a smaller fee (PhP130). Viewers can then pay a top-up fee of PhP80 for this document to be printed on secure paper at the Civil Registry System Central Outlet.

The Philippines is also pushing ahead with its new biometric digital ID system, PhilSys, based on MOSIP. The goal is to reach 92 million registrations by the end of 2022.

Quezon City itself has a parallel ID system, the QCitizen Card, based on a city government database. It is used for accessing health, welfare and city amenities such as the free bus system, according to its site. For example, “If a resident has skipped having his regular health check-up at their nearest health center, the city health workers would know and will conduct necessary measures to make him get this health checked.”

Article Topics

authentication  |  birth registration  |  civil registration  |  Philippines  |  Philippines Statistics Authority