Apia, SAMOA – The work of the Samoa Bureau of Statistics (SBS) in digitising birth, marriage and death records – otherwise known as the Civil Registration and Vital Statistics (CRVS) system – received a major boost this month with the receipt of two key equipment.

A high-capacity scanner, to support the digitisation of paper-based records, and a server, to expand the storage and hosting capacity as the volume of digital records continues to grow, were given to bolster the work of the Births, Deaths and Marriages (BDM) Division of the SBS.

This is thanks to a long-standing partnership between SBS and the United Nations Development Programme’s (UNDP), under its Accelerator Lab initiative, which promotes digital transformation to enhance service delivery and operations.

“We are grateful for our strong partnership with UNDP, through the Accelerator Lab, which has provided much-needed assistance to the Samoa Bureau of Statistics across many areas, and especially in digitally transforming and strengthening our CRVS system,” said Leota Aliielua Salani, Chief Executive Officer, SBS.

The handover of these assets completes Phase 3 of the CRVS partnership between UNDP and the Samoa Bureau of Statistics. This phase focused on building institutional capacity and infrastructure through a dedicated document management strategy to guide the digitising of historical records, and preparing and building the capacity of SBS and its BDM Division on how to accelerate scalability of the new CRVS prototype system.