Foundation for a new civil status application based on advanced technologies developed

The final meeting of the project “Reform of civil status registries in Croatia using advanced technological solutions as a precondition for a modern and agile public service” was held today in Zagreb, at the premises of the Ministry of Justice, Public Administration and Digital Transformation

"We have long had a vision for the second generation of digitalised civil registries, and with the emergence of advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence, it is time to implement this vision and develop a new application for civil registries based on new technologies, in which the five existing registries will be merged into one and there will be a unique profile for each citizen," said Minister of Justice, Public Administration and Digital Transformation Damir Habijan in his opening address.

The objective was to raise the level of data quality in the civil registers (birth, marriage, death, citizenship and registered partnership registries), in order to take steps in the future that will ultimately lead to even more modern and agile public service.

Currently, civil registries are kept in a single information system that was created in 2013, which contains five different registers distinguished on the basis of facts i.e. life events. There are no personal citizen profiles, which leads to discrepancies and redundancy of data.

Bearing in mind that data from civil registries represent the basis for all services that in any way contain data on citizens, provided by public authorities, but also by the private sector, it was necessary to resolve the problem of data mismatch, transform notes into a machine-readable record and create a new integrated registry in which all data will be entered only once. The data entered in this way will be up-to-date and accurate in other records and documents which retrieve data from the civil status registry.

As part of this project, technical documentation was created which will serve as the foundation for the development of the new civil status application based on advanced technologies, where five existing registries will be merged into one and descriptive data (notes) will be structured.

The project was implemented from January 2024 and funded by the European Union under the Technical Support Instrument. It was implemented through cooperation of the Ministry of Justice, Public Administration and Digital Transformation with PricewaterhouseCoopers d.o.o. and SG REFORM of the European Commission as the main stakeholders, and interdepartmental cooperation with the registry offices in the counties and the City of Zagreb, the Ministry of the Interior, the Ministry of Finance - Tax Administration, the Croatian Bureau of Statistics, the State Geodetic Administration, the Croatian Health Insurance Institute and the Croatian Pension Insurance Institute.