(Newsletter: CRVS Insight December 2020)

Regional Steering Group members, Ms. Kamni Naidu (Fiji), Mr. Jeff Montgomery (NZ) and Ms. Gloria Mathenge (Pacific Community, Brisbane Accord Group), recently presented Pacific developments during a series of virtual seminars on the impact of COVID-19 on CRVS. Organised by the United Nations Statistics Division for CARICOM countries, both Fiji and New Zealand were asked to share their practical experiences, drawing on the similarities between the countries of the Pacific and the Caribbean. Participants showed particular interest in the moves towards digital registration in both Fiji and NZ, as well as the successful use of Business Continuity Planning in NZ. A video of the webinars is available and readers can see Mr. Montgomery's presentation by visiting www.getinthepicture.org.

New Zealand is now half-way through a six year programme to transform the way New Zealanders access identity and life event services by putting customers at the heart of service delivery and continuously making it easier for them to access services. So far, this journey involved moving all high volume civil registration services online (such as births, deaths and marriages), enabling citizenship applications to be completed online, and very soon, first-time passport applications will be done online as well. The next stage of the transformation will see the underlying civil registration infrastructure being moved into a cloud-based environment, the ability for New Zealanders to access and share their own identity information digitally, and more sharing of civil registration data between government and non-government agencies. The new online citizenship service is being promoted here.