Federated States of Micronesia By Mitzue S. Paulis Pacific Regional Workshop on Legal Identity and Identity Security 8-10th July 2019 Federated States of Micronesia By Mitzue S. Paulis

Presentation Outline Status of the civil registration system Role of the health sector in supporting civil registration Role of ICT in record capture, storage and archival Use of civil registration data to confirm/ validate legal identity Plans for establishment of national ID system

Overview: Status of the civil registration system: Estimated birth registration completeness for the most recent years: Year 2018: 3% Year2017: 1.8% Year 2016: 2.8% Estimated death registration completeness for the most recent year Year 2018: 4.7% Year 2017: 4.9% Year 2016: 4.7% Estimated completeness for Births=Number of births registered within one year of occurrence/ Number of births estimated by most recent census*100 Estimated completeness for Deaths =Births=Number of deaths registered within one year of occurrence/ Number of births estimated by most recent census*100

Role of the health sector in supporting civil registration functions The Dept. Of Health Services in the four states shows full support to the civil registration functions in the FSM. FSM Law TITLE 41 – PUBLIC HEALTH, SAFETY, AND WELFARE § 105. Birth and death records. (1) The Department of Health Services shall be responsible for: (a) the prompt collection of vital statistical information concerning all births and deaths occurring in the Trust Territory; (b) preparing forms and issuing instructions necessary for uniform registration of births and deaths; (c) filing a copy of the certificate of such birth or death with the clerk of courts of the district in which the birth or death occurred; and, (d) compiling, analyzing, and publishing vital statistics concerning births and deaths, and such other general welfare of the inhabitants of the Trust Territory.

Role of the health sector in supporting civil registration functions (2) Other departments, as designated by the High Commissioner, shall cooperate with and assist the Department of Health Services in performing these functions. (3) The clerk of courts in each district shall register births and deaths by recording and indexing each birth and death certificate filed in his office in accordance with the regulations provided in this chapter. One thing we would like to work on is for the Dept. Of Health Services to provide the completed Births and Deaths as soon as it completes. The practice is that they only issue upon request. And this is because they do not have that database system that can generates all births and deaths that are a completed in a system where you just search the name and there, you have the BC or DC.

Record capture, storage and Archival The four states of the Federated of Micronesia, each has its own way of capturing, storing, and archiving the civil registrations. Limited Resources Scanning and saving on External Drives Family Search Program from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Captured and archived all records from the beginning up to 2009 (Pohnpei) With this archiving, death and marriage are both link to the birth certificate. And because of limited resources and under staff records were not updated until today. The four states does use a unique identification number/code for all civil registration records registered at the court. These numbers begins each year up to the end of the year and new number count began beginning of the next year. Example BC 1-19 and so forth. The code is not used by other departments.

Use of civil registration data to confirm/ validate legal identity The four states do not share birth and death data collected through civil registration to other government departments without the consent of the individual.

Status and plans for implementation of a national ID system The Federated States of Micronesia is in the process of planning to implement a national ID system and they would like to focus first on those who born outside the FSM with parents/parent are/is a citizen of the FSM.

Recent developments and/or plans Pohnpei Supreme Court Recent incident of fire occurred June 18, 2019 Destroyed all civil registrations on file. Destroyed court clerks computers. Nothing left but the archived civil registrations by the Family Search Program.

Recent developments Registered, scanned, and saved all civil registration received after the incident of the fire. Filed all received civil registrations in filing cabinets. Send copy of BC and DC indexes to Department of Health Services to provide records lost. Proposed Civil Registrar position who will only focus on civil registrations. While issuing civil registrations to each individual, we are educating them to memorize their BC or DC code numbers as well.

PLAN Civil Registration Office separate from the Court Clerk Office. Propose IT position. Database System. Work with the Dept. of Health Services on how we can register all civil registrations as soon as information are completed by the informant. And if there is a way that these civil registrations are not only registered by upon request. Share Database system.

Thank you and Kalahngan.