KINGSTON, Jamaica— Minister without portfolio in the Office of the Prime Minister, Floyd Green, says the Registrar General’s Department (RGD) bedside registration programme will be expanded.

He said 60 computers will be donated shortly to the agency for the programme.  An application system is being developed for a mid-year roll out that will enable personnel at the RGD, when they visit hospitals, to register children at birth. There will be automatic completion of the process.

“Once the information is inputted at bedside, it is atomically uploaded on the RGD systems,” the Minister said while speaking recently with reporters at the agency at Twickenham Park, St Catherine.

The app will allow mothers to leave hospitals with electronic copies of their children’s birth certificates and support other technologically advanced record-keeping.

He added that the agency will play a “massive role” in the implementation of the National Identification System (NIDS), and he is meeting with his teams to ensure that the regulations are presented to Parliament in the shortest possible time. He is also planning for meetings with the public, to promote the benefits of the programme.

Green is overseeing the NIDS project.

Production of digital certificates is also part of the immediate focus of the RGD, and digitisation of the records stored at the agency. The Minister stressed that they have a mandate to be “digitally bold” and to ensure that their services are “transferable to the digital space”.

“[This is] so that we have ease of access, and that is part of my remit at the Office of the Prime Minister – to work with the RGD and drive the digitisation project, and digitisation of government service,” Green said.

In praising the agency for allowing the public to access some of its services online, the Minister said the programme will be accelerated and several “exciting initiatives” will be added.