In 1997 the first government of Leonel Fernandez awarded a US$17 million contract to Datocentro, a leading data company today gone bankrupt, to automate the civil registry. It didn’t happen. Now the Fernandez government seems to be willing to back the process all over again, even though no explanations have come forth as to what happened with the first disbursements.
Luis Arias Nunez, president of the Central Electoral Board (JCE) announced that they are only awaiting go ahead on the funding for US$35 million to automate the registry, according to a report in El Caribe newspaper. Now that the Supreme Court rejected that the JCE fund the organization of political party primaries, and there seems there will not be funding to introduce electronic voting in the next election, he says it is time to go ahead with the automating of the civil registry.
Automating of the civil registry is seen as a national priority. News reports have focused on how census carried out by the government to start the Fernandez welfare programs such as “Comer es Primero” have revealed that thousands of apparent Dominicans are inexistent as citizens. Thousands of mothers do not have the document, either, and thus cannot register their offspring, condemning these to a life in anonymity. The authorities estimate the situation affects 20% of the population.
One of the main issues is to automate the registry so that birth certificates are issued in all hospitals. This would do away with the today obligation of parents visiting civil registry offices to record the birth. The government allows up to one month for the parents to register the child. If this is not done within that period, the process becomes tedious and bureaucratic, stimulating procrastination.
This time around the JCE has plans to take up offers of funding from two foreign government export financing institutions ? US Eximbank and Brazil’s Bndes. A fast-track tender organized during the past government and concluded in September 2004 was won by Soluciones Modernas, represented in the DR by Daniel Bodden. Dominican companies that are part of the consortium, are Soinca and Print Shop, Softek from Puerto Rico, Samurai and Intautec from Brazil, and Microsoft and HP Invent from the US.
SOMO says that the work done by Datocentro will be discarded and they will start from zero.