THE Local Civil Registrar’s (LCR) Office is preparing to equip all district offices with computers as part of its ongoing digitalization program.
Orlando Alvaira, head of the Adoption Section, said the move will make transactions easier for the public since people will no longer need to go to the main office to secure official documents.
“Plano namo sa digitalization ang tanan mga district I-equipt sa mga computers para pag abot sa panahom complete na gyud intact na (Our plan is to equip all district offices with computers so that once the system is ready, everything will be complete and intact),” Alvaira said in a September 23 interview on Davao City Disaster Radio.
Earlier this year, he said that the new system will eventually allow people to track their requests online. Future upgrades are expected to include online payments, enabling residents to file requests digitally, monitor their status, and receive updates. To speed up the project, the office plans to hire 10 additional personnel who will help scan millions of records for digitization.
For now, however, Alvaira clarified that online access to documents such as birth certificates and Certificates of No Marriage (Cenomar) is not yet available through the city’s system since most records remain in physical form. He advised residents to use the Philippine Statistics Authority’s PSA Serbilis service for faster access to these documents.
Equipment coming in
Councilor Bonz Andre Militar, chair of the Committee on Information Technology, said equipment to convert records from paper to digital copies is expected to arrive soon.
“Daghan man goud kaayo tag records dili makaya ug isa-isahon tana so naa tay gip alit na mga equipment to convert everything manual to digital copy (We have too many records to process manually, so we purchased equipment to convert everything into digital format),” Militar said in a media interview on September 9. He added that the system for the project is currently being developed by the Davao City Information Technology Center (CITC).
Urgent need for digitalization
The digitalization plan stems from an ordinance passed by the 20th City Council on December 12, 2024, mandating the use of the Civil Registration Information System (CRIS).
A committee report underscored the urgency of the project, citing the massive backlog of records, including those damaged in a fire. These include more than 1.35 million birth certificates from 1963 to 1989, 624,000 marriage certificates from 1945 to 2022, 702,000 death certificates, and 27.8 million LICD attachments up to 2024.
Officials said additional manpower and new scanners are crucial to fast-track the process and preserve decades of civil registry records. RGP