United Kingdom, 2005-Aug-01
Siemens Business Services has announced that it has secured a contract with the Office for National Statistics (ONS) to scan, digitise and index more than 250 million birth, marriage and death certificates from 1837 to the present day.
The three year project, called Digitisation of Vital Events (DoVE) is part of the strategy to modernise civil registration. The computerised record of all vital events will enable a more efficient service for people buying certificates. This project will deliver significant efficiencies in the production of certificates, moving from a labour intensive manual process to a streamlined automated process. The ONS received more than 2 million applications for certificates last year.
Carrie Armitage, Project Director from ONS said: "It is essential to create new solutions to save time and money and give better service to the public, particularly as there is a growing number of applications for certificates."
Ian Tait, Operation Related Services Director for Siemens Business Services said: "Being part of a project with such a huge scope and historical value is very exciting. We were able to prove that Siemens Business Services has the capabilities to undertake this project with extremely high quality and security standards at every stage of this project."
The microfilm archive of the paper records dating back to 1837 is held at the ONS in Southport, Merseyside. The microfilm cassettes will be taken to the Siemens Document Scanning Centre in Beeston, Nottinghamshire. All 80,000 microfilms will be scanned and encrypted and the images transmitted securely to the Siemens Business Process Operation Centre in India for data capture.
High targets for completeness, accuracy and quality must be met and this will be managed from the UK based Centre of Excellence co-located at the ONS in Southport. When the records meet the stringent quality standards the completed digitised records and images will then be returned to ONS. It is planned that all certificates will be digitised by 2008.
About Siemens Business Services
Siemens Business Services is among the top ten providers worldwide of outsourcing and IT maintenance services. Sales in fiscal year 2004 (ending 30 September 2004) were EUR 4.7 billion. The company has over 36,000 employees worldwide.
Siemens Business Services is one of the UK's largest IT and business service providers employing over 6,600 staff. Leveraging the technology and financial strengths of the Siemens Group, Siemens Business Services offers a wide portfolio of IT, communications, media and business services and solutions.
From consulting through to design, build, support and operation, the company is able to translate today's most challenging business requirements into innovative and effective solutions.
With particular strengths in IT and business process outsourcing, Siemens Business Services serves many of the largest organisations in the financial services, public sector, retail, and media and entertainment markets.
Mr. Alistair Kent / Sally Robards
Kaizo
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