The Chennai Corporation has decided to make birth and death certificates online on their website www.chennaicorporation.tngov.in. This will help people to avoid standing in long queues to obtain these certifcates from the corporation office. This service will be available from September 7, 2008.
The system will work in a simple fashion with a person required to take a printout of the certificate from the web page which will have the facsimile signature of the health officer of the corporation, thus making it authenticated.
The Union Ministry of Urban Development plans to replicate the model in other cities, if the Chennai model proves to be successful. This is a part of the e-Governance initiatives of the government across the country.
An estimated 1,10,000 births and 42,000 deaths taking place every year in the Chennai itself. Therefore, keeping records is a very tricky task. Usage of IT will improve the registration process of deaths and births. The corporations using an exclusive software will enable the uplinking of birth/death events in local zonal offices.
The Corporation has already uploaded 33,38,343 births and 9,68,765 deaths so far. 450 hospitals in Chennai have been given an exclusive login and password which will enable delivery of data straight from the hospitals, thus reporting of birhs and deaths immediately. This data will then be approved by the birth/death registrars in the local zonal offices of the corporation before being uploaded on the website. The Birth and Death Registration Act states that births and deaths needs to be registered within 21 days.
