VIRTUALLY now ‘light years’ from its tout-infested, corruption-ridden antecedents at Constitution Square, Spanish Town, the Registrar General’s Department (RGD) is today a victim of its own rapid but oversold success.

On a spectacular day — when everything comes together — a birth certificate could be delivered within 24 hours of application, compared with what was frequently more than a year-long wait in the still recent past. And there’s no longer the uncertainty that one’s money could disappear, if the tout who had promised quicker service than the system did not return.

But try telling that to the often frustrated, sun-drenched throng, many of whom, after several fruitless visits to the RGD’s current location at Twickenham Park, resemble an angry mob, shouting and cursing at stressed out RGD staff.

The RGD, headed by Dr Patricia Holness, a high profile Christian woman whose charming explanations about the agency’s operations can easily disarm even hardened talk show hosts, became an executive agency in April 1999 — one of four chosen to showcase the Government’s public sector reform along customer-friendly lines.

Almost overnight, the RGD transformed itself into a shining example of efficiency and growth, delivering official documents in record time and raking in millions of dollars. Its public relations agents sold a glitzy story of the RGD’s success and the crowds bought it.

As hundreds of people crammed the premises daily, most seeking birth certificates, the RGD soon threw up tents, now a familiar blue, on the grounds outside its offices to accommodate the spill-over crowd.

But as the department increasingly failed to deliver on the overnight sensation image, it became the target of many complaints and a regular topic of discussion on popular day-time radio talk shows and in caustic letters to the newspapers.

Even now, RGD officials insist that over 90 per cent of all applications for birth, marriage and death certificates are processed to completion within a reasonable time frame.

“Most persons use the seven-day service, and you will find that we tend to satisfy about 90 per cent of those within the allotted time,” said Dawn Douglas, deputy chief executive officer and director of operations at the RGD. “With the express service, once all the correct and necessary information is in, we guarantee a response within hours.”

Data provided by the department show that it satisfactorily processed 185,704 of the 204,543 applications it received for the year 2001-2002.

But two Friday afternoons ago, the Sunday Observer saw the usually crowded tents, visible off the Mandela Highway, filled mostly with disgruntled applicants. Some said they had been waiting since before daylight to have their applications processed.

“Dem haffi do better than this,” said Claudine Terrelonge, who was sitting with her son under one of the tents, eating her lunch shortly after midday. She said the visit to retrieve a copy of her child’s birth certificate was her second in two days, even though she had ordered the express service, a premium cost feature offered by the RGD.

“I don’t think that the system doesn’t work, I just don’t think it is working well enough,” said another woman who didn’t want to be identified. She also applied for the express service for two birth certificates early Thursday morning and was still waiting for one to be processed.

Inside the building, however, RGD officials sang a different tune. They report high rates of processed and completed applications, although they did point out that most times, complaints about the time taken to process applications and deliver certificates mostly come from people who have some missing element from their applications.

The great majority of those who opt for the seven-day service get a response — either the actual presentation of the certificate, usually within two to four hours — or may be told by an officer of the RGD what additional information was needed to complete their applications.

“Sometimes people don’t have all the information handy, they may be using a pet name, sometimes they’re not sure of their year of birth or even their parents’ correct names,” said Douglas. “These omissions and glitches can at times delay the process indefinitely, especially if the

solution cannot be found in the RGD’s archives,” she added.

Michael Terrelonge, the RGD’s director of information and records management, said even as time- consuming and frustrating as they are, incomplete or incorrect applications were only a fraction of the challenges that the RGD faces in meeting customer demands.

Since May 2001, when the agency began issuing computer-generated certificates, for instance, the demand for certificates had increased close to 40 per cent, placing a burden on the system that the RGD was still trying to cope with.

“Whenever a business has a product, and it innovates that product, then it is a good thing for business, since demand for that product will increase,” said Terrelonge. “It’s the same thing here at the RGD. In the past, we would make a photocopy of the original record, stamp it and that would be considered an official copy. To tailor to the needs of the public, we wanted a product with better authenticity because there were a number of people trying to do the same thing as the RGD, which brought our product into disrepute.

“The moment we produced a computer-generated certificate that could not be tampered with, the demand for the product mushroomed to the point where almost no one will accept the old product,” Terrelonge explained.

Last year, for instance, the RGD processed close to 300,000 applications for certificates, 75 per cent of those being birth certificates. That represented a 37 per cent boost in demand over the previous year, and this year, the RGD expects 40 per cent more applications than they processed last year, due to the fact that the Government’s new National Health Fund will require applicants to present a Taxpayer Registration Number (TRN), available only with a valid birth certificate.

Adding even more to the strain is the seasonal peak in demand for certificates of GSAT-aged children, who also need valid birth certificates to register for those examinations.

“Even in (private) business, a 37 per cent increase in demand for a product would place a tremendous strain on the system, and that is the case here,” said Terrelonge. “Right now, we are putting things in place to change our organisation.”

Some of those measures are intended to speed up the process, but RGD officials cautioned that issues of security and authenticity could not be overlooked.

“You see, what is driving the demand for certificates is identity verification. Identity in the modern world is a big issue for every nation, especially since September 11. We have a product that can mean life or death for people,” Terrelonge emphasised.

He said among those seeking Jamaican identities were drug traffickers, deportees who need to re-enter countries under different names, and “all sorts of people try to circumvent the system and get through with identity fraud”.

To deal with attempts at fraud, the RGD has resorted to putting police officers on the premises at all times, and has introduced an internal security system to prevent bogus documents being released. That is in addition to the segregation of duties so that no one employee can follow an application the full way through processing without having the documents inspected and verified by several senior staff members.

“Those controls are crucial to us, and it may seem tedious, but it is necessary to ensure accuracy and integrity,” said Terrelonge.

For the near and future terms, Terrelonge disclosed, the RGD has installed a custom-built customer relationship management computer programme that allows applications to be tracked within the system from the moment of arrival. The programme has a handy feature which allows customer service representatives to immediately be able to inform applicants whether or not they will be able to receive their certificates, and then how far along in the process their applications are.

Another long-term change that should bring improvement is last September’s opening of the Half-Way-Tree no-cash branch, which will, in addition to the other satellite offices in St Ann’s Bay, Mandeville and Montego Bay help to ease the congestion at the head office in Twickenham Park. According to deputy CEO Douglas, there were plans afoot to move the Montego Bay office to a different, more suitable location, since at the moment, that office, like the head office, was pressed for space.

To ease the immediate burden of replacing old certificates with the new ones, and to facilitate the registering of GSAT-aged children, the RGD last December introduced two mobile units that visit hard-to-reach communities, businesses and schools, cutting down dramatically on the traffic to the head office. The mobile units will complement the fax, phone, mail and e-mail application options that have been introduced over the past few years, which, if used more by the public could cut wait time and traffic.

Nevertheless, the full effect of these measures apparently hasn’t reached the general public, and outside the RGD’s air-conditioned offices, the hot sun just seemed to inflame tempers even more.