European
UK General Registrar says that public records administration will not be outsourced to India
By Finfacts Team
Jun 27, 2005, 12:03

As fears of identity theft reach fever pitch worldwide, The Registrar General for England and Wales today released a statement aiming to dispel the fears of UK citizens concerning the digitization of registration records of births, deaths and marriages.

After a 12-month long tender, the General Registrar’s Office has announced that it is in talks with Seimens Business Systems, which will see encrypted digital copies of birth, marriage and death records of UK citizens sent to India. The aim of this contract is to create a digitized record of the documents, creating an index to all records.

“The aim throughout our plans to reform civil registration has been to deliver a better, more efficient service to the public. Digitisation of records of births, marriages and deaths is an important part of that reform and is in line with Government principles on offering choice

and joined up services to the public,” said Len Cook, Registrar General for England and Wales.

Concerns have been raised about the possibility of identity theft occurring during the process. However, Mr. Cook has said that this will not occur, as strict quality control and security measures will be implemented.

“UK residents are not at risk of having their identities stolen. The contract with Siemens has very strict security and audit controls built into the process. This includes physical security of computer

equipment and security checks and vetting of all staff. Employees are required to leave bags and belongings in lockers and cannot take them into the working area. They are also not allowed to take mobile phones, laptops or other electronic devices into the working area to prevent information being copied or removed illegally,” Mr Cook said in a statement released today.

Other physical security controls include:

Scanning: There is no ability for scanner operators to print or store information on removable storage devices. The only frames that can be viewed are for the Quality Assurance process. Therefore no form of skimming device can be employed to capture screen images.

Transmission of images offshore: This process uses proven encryption techniques and is currently utilised by both retail banking operations and other government departments. There are rigorous security and audit procedures in order to comply with tight security regulations.

Offshore Filestore: The products and software used to store the digitized images are commercially proven and users/processors will not have access to the image and data storage

Personal Computers: The PCs will have no removable data store and the PCs will be configured such that the data entry operators will have no access to native Windows software or the Internet. They will not be able to store, print or email any images that are brought to the screen or any data that is captured from it. The data entry operator will be under the sole

control of the data entry application which effectively renders the PC as a dumb terminal.

Mr Cook said today, that the decision to outsource the data digitization process to India, occurred only after a 12-month long tender for the project, which was carried out under normal European Union procurement rules. He also said that the only bid received to do the work wholly in the UK was several times the cost of the proposed Seimens contract.

The plans to digitise the birth, marriage and death records involve three processes:

• The first process is to create digital images of the record from the existing microfilm or paper records. All image digitisation, whether microfilm or paper based will be done in the UK. No original registration records or paper copies will leave the UK.

• The second process is to data-capture key elements of the information on the image to create searchable fields for each record. This second process will take place in India.

• The third process involves the review of any individual records, which are difficult to decipher and have failed the data capture process. At this stage all the records will be subjected to overall quality assurance, validation and acceptance testing. All of these processes will be carried out in a Centre of Excellence established at the General Register Office.

Mr. Cook said today that there had been “much mis-informed comment” about these plans and that it was not true that original registration records would be sent outside the UK.

“Only digital images will be sent abroad so that key information for the indexes can be data-captured,” Mr. Cook added.

Mr Cook also dispelled comments that the 1,000 jobs in India are not being transferred from the UK. According to the General Registrar’s office today, the proposed work will not create any permanent jobs as it is a one-off exercise, which involves a small amount of data, capture work from each image on a large scale over a period of 30 months.

Once the index records have been quality checked and accepted by the General Register Office in Southport, Merseyside, all images and data records will be deleted from any off-shore computers. Once the exercise is complete, all digital images will be held by the General Register Office and all certificates will continue to be issued from Southport, the General Registrar’s office said today.