An amendment to the Birth, Death, Marriages and Relationships Registration Act in 2008 meant 11 million historical records, since 1848, would be made publically available. It pointed the way to doing this via the internet.

Prior to this, microfiche index searches and requests in writing or in person were the only way that the Department of Internal Affairs (DIA), genealogists or members of the public could seek out births, deaths and marriage records. This labour-intensive process could take days or weeks.

Births and deaths have been recorded since 1848 and there are 11 million births, deaths, marriage and civil union records. When the amendment came into force, on January 25 2009, the DIA gave Intergen the green light to design and develop a website that would be for users to search to find information about historical birth, death and marriage certificates.

The pain
When Department of Internal Affairs Minister Richard Worth announced that the website was available, the response was swift and immediate – the new site registered a phenomenal 13,507 unique visitors to between noon and midnight on its first day of operation.

A satisfying statistics DIA's project manager Mike Marsden confirms says the statistics for the first month of the site’s operation and positive feedback he has received speak volumes about the success of the new website.

“Intergen helped build a streamlined, good-looking, easy to use website, with a shopping mechanism which concludes a very fast and simple process for people to complete the searches they wish to make. They resolved the challenges early on and that was significant to making the deadline,” he says.

“Intergen’s ability to collaborate effectively with several other vendors, to provide an end-to-end solution, was critical to the success of the site.”

Indeed, NZ Net Guide columnist Jan Gow wrote of the site: “What a year 2009 is proving to be for genealogists!  The NZ Births, Deaths & Marriages index is online. This release is just fantastic. What's more, we have what I think is a world first: the database updates every midnight, so new records come online every day, rather than waiting for a yearly January 1 update.”

Early statistical results show over 3,000 unique visitors a day to the site, indicating that the website has answered a strong public call for readily available births, deaths and marriages information. Site users can enter a family name and dates or a registration number to get the information they want and use a credit card to order a certificate.

Microfiche indexes had done their service. This slow route search has now been fast-tracked with the introduction of an online web service for historical information.

The DIA imposed very tight deadlines. Intergen was engaged to design and develop the whole front-end of the website using .NET 3.5 and Microsoft SQL Server 2005.

There were significant challenges around the need to rebuild the servers at the DIA and to assimilate the new online billing service into the DIA billing environment.

The gain
In marrying accessibility with good design, the online service has been able to make it immeasurably easier to access historical births, deaths and marriages information.

For more information
Intergen
www.intergen.co.nz

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