The Need
The Civil Registration Services Department, in the Ministry of Interior in Kenya was facing a myriad of challenges related to its service delivery. Among those challenges was a low registration of births and deaths, which affected the quality of population related statistics in Kenya. The user journeys for the citizenry in accessing the services of the department (like the acquisition of birth certificates) was sometimes a long, tedious and expensive process: although the cost of a birth certificate was only approximately USD 0.5, the actual cost would be multiple US dollars due to such costs as frequent visits to Civil Registration Services offices, some of which would be located far from some of the citizens. The Civil Registration Services Department was therefore looking for a way to improve on its operational efficiency, improve on its data quality and simplify the ease of access to its services throughout the country.
What Cutting Edge Technologies Limited did for Civil Registration Services Department
We undertook a review of the Civil Registration and Vital Statistics System (CRVSS), which is the core application used by the department. We also undertook a review of the user journeys for the various personas who seek the services of the Civil Registration Services Department. As part of this project, we also undertook a review of the legal and regulatory framework that governs the operations of the Civil Registration Services Department in Kenya.
It then became clear that we were dealing with a complex problem, which required Complex Problem-Solving techniques. We therefore used our Systems Thinking methodology for Complex Problem Solving to enable us unearth the various problems that the Civil Registration Services Department was ailing from. We structured the department’s business processes and identified the challenges associated with each of the processes, which were published in a reported sponsored by United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), Kenya. The Civil Registration Services Department then undertook to apply our recommendations contained in the problem-solving SMART (Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Realistic and Time-bound) action plan, which we developed from the Complex Problem-Solving tool that we used.
EN 
FR