According to
the world assessment carried out annually by the United Nations, Uruguay currently ranks third according to its development of Electronic Government (EG) in the list of all Latin American countries. The Office for Development of the
Electronic Government and the Information and Knowledge Society, AGESIC according to its Spanish acronym (“Agencia para el Desarrollo del Gobierno de Gestión Electrónica y la Sociedad de la Información y del Conocimiento”) is the State agency created in 2005 to promote the project by contributing to a better relationship between the public administration and the citizens, for which it resorts to ICTs.
Among the several projects that are currently in progress along with the EG strategic line is the Electronic Live Birth Certificate –developed with GeneXus by the Ministry of Public Health (“MSP”)- which has national coverage and the possibility of measuring interoperability and connectivity necessary for an efficient Electronic Government platform.
Electronic Live Birth Certificate: pioneering project of the Electronic Government The Electronic Live Birth Certificate (CNVE) is one of the bases of the Electronic Government. It was one of the first projects implemented to test the functioning of the RedUy platform (a high speed and availability network that connects all Ministries and the basic State agencies) which will soon be completed, and has been successfully in use since 2008. The Ministry of Health was responsible for this development, for interaction with other organizations like the National Civil Identification Office (DNIC), the Social Security Bank and the Ministry of Education and Culture.
Alicia Ferreira, the
Director of the Information Systems Division of the Ministry of Health, explained that the system was conceived on the basis of a technological base that would allow
interoperability and connectivity among the various agencies and the use of Web Services, including the definition of standards (See chart: “
Why GeneXus?”).
The CNVE’s main objective is to
improve the timeliness and quality of citizen registration of those born in Uruguay, so that every inhabitant will have an ID number at birth. For this purpose, the connection between the CNVE system and all maternity centers is planned to take place soon – the first grand step was in 2008 at the country’s main maternity center: the Pereira Rossell Center-, as well with other related systems, both private and public, or other related with programs within the Ministry of Health, like the Perinatal Information System (SIP).
The process starts with a record by those who first assist pregnant women, and another record by the gynecologist who is present at the birth, with an electronic signature. The application is connected to the DNIC through web services to forward all data relative to the mother for the DNIC to later send the confirmation of the mother’s ID number and the match with all other data. What would this mechanism help to avoid? The forgery of certificates.
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Following the birth of the child, the data is entered and forwarded to the DNIC, which in turn returns a reserved ID number. Also the birth certificate remains in the database with clinical information to be there for the rest of the individual’s life. This is the start of a Single Clinical File”, said Gerardo Abreu, the technical Manager of the MSP’s division and one of the officials responsible for the project.
Until now, the clinical file has been written and identified in various ways and according to different criteria. From now on, the ID number will be the number of the Clinical File of the newly born citizen.
Among other benefits like accessibility, prompt documentation and unified information systems, the CNVE will allow, in the future, greater control of the identity of mothers, to be included in the interconnection with the DNIC with fingerprint data.
Main benefits of implementing the CNVE:
• Avoids double entry of data, both of the newly born and the mother’s, with the purpose of minimizing errors.
• Better identity control of mothers, and the avoidance of fraud.
• Avoids the need to request data from citizens on numerous occasions, which becomes annoying and discourages use of the system.
The CNVE project also allows
optimization of data on vital statistics according to the UNDP’s (United Nations Development Programme) requirements. “Until now, we had birth and death records on paper, which implies not only the problem of paper files but also the fact that the following digitalization is a lengthy process that delays statistics”, said Abreu in that respect.
Having the CNVE in full function, said the Director Alicia Ferreira, will bring about the Project called SEVEN (Vital
Statistics, Pregnancy and Childhood System, according to its Spanish acronym) a pioneer in Latin America. On the same database of the CNVE, data on the various moments and processes of the individual’s health will be added for the birth, the death, the perinatal data and the clinical file to be all on a single document to ensure medical control for all children until the second year of age. All such technological processes will result in improved health and the avoidance of premature deaths in children.
Uruguay: an ideal Electronic Government “pilot”
According to the Director of the Information Systems Division of the MSP, the advantages of projects of this magnitude carried out in a country with the characteristics of Uruguay “are that we are a small population that makes us an ideal electronic government pilot”. And we would be more ideal if we focus on this particular project, because, among developing countries, 97% of births in Uruguay take place in public institutions, “this means that births occur at maternity centers and not in rural areas or at homes. Our maternity centers have the technology necessary for Internet connection, one of the scenarios needed to implement this type of projects covering 100% of the 40 to 50 thousand births occurred each year in Uruguay. This, in addition to the fact that Uruguay is one of the countries with a greater index of Internet penetration” explained Alicia Ferreira.