On the whole, does this project take steps to ensure that it anticipates, prevents and does no harm by design?

Yes

Is there any additional information you would like to share about the mechanisms, processes or policies that this project uses to avoid doing harm by design?

OpenCRVS has been developed together with the support of a Technical Advisory Group (TAG), comprising a wide variety of international experts in the domain of civil registration and vital statistics, which has the following responsibilities:
1. Provide strategic advice for the overall direction and positioning of the OpenCRVS product.
2. Help identify short, medium and long term priorities for OpenCRVS product development.
3. Share experiences and documentation of CRVS that can be used to inform the development of the product e.g. lessons learnt, requirements, and useful contacts.
4. Support OpenCRVS research and policy development activities through working group or individual contributions.
5. Support in the development of the sustainability model for OpenCRVS.
6. Conduct additional research that will support development of OpenCRVS.
7. Peer review technical, functional design standards and content to be used for the development of OpenCRVS.
8. Advise compliance with relevant existing standards, including introductions to other relevant network and standardization bodies.
Minutes of the TAG meetings can be found here:
https://www.opencrvs.org/about-us
The UN guidelines for civil registration and vital statistics systems provide a very comprehensive basis to support governments to build, operate and maintain effective civil registration systems that prevent doing harm. These UN guidelines should be used in conjunction with any OpenCRVS implementation and can be found here: https://www.un.org/development/desa/capacity-development/tools/tool/principles-and-recommendations-for-a-vital-statistics-system-revision-3/
We engage with the OpenCRVS community so that vulnerabilities and risks can be continuously monitored. We have hosted webinars with this community to capture feedback from across the civil registration community. See an example call on “OpenCRVS: Product capabilities and technical deployment” here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7gsr6LiToo
In order to understand and mitigate the risks (particularly for children) within a digital civil registration system, the project created “Identifying and addressing risks to children in digitised birth registration systems: a step-by-step guide”. (https://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Issues/Children/BirthRegistrationMarginalized/PlanInternationalGeneva_4.pdf) If not anticipated, digital civil registration systems can present a number of child protection threats:
- Identity theft or fraud
- Privacy violation
- Targeting based on personal characteristics
- Personal security violation or exploitation
- Exclusion from the benefits of birth registration
The risk assessment tool, which forms part of this guide, should be used in collaboration with any OpenCRVS implementation to ensure these and other risks are identified and mitigated against. OpenCRVS has been designed specifically for low resource settings and to overcome the barriers typically seen in countries where birth and death registration is low. See https://documentation.opencrvs.org/opencrvs-core/docs/system_overview/keyFeatures which shows features that facilitate inclusion and aim to mitigate the risk that individuals are disadvantaged because they are not registered in the civil registry.

Does this project collect or store personally identifiable information (PII) data and/or content?

Yes

If yes - please list the types of data and/or content collected and/or stored by the project:

• As a civil registration system, OpenCRVS is designed to collect PII, as prescribed in the laws and regulations of the jurisdiction where the system is being implemented. The PII collected depends on the vital event being registered but typically the following is collected and processed by OpenCRVS:
  - Full name
  - Home address
  - Personal identification number
  - Telephone number
  Although not formally PII, the following data is also collected by OpenCRVS, however when linked with other data it could be used to to identify a specific person:
  - Date of birth
  - Gender

If yes - does this project share this data and/or content with third parties?

Yes

Please describe the circumstances with which this project shares data and/or content with third parties. Please add links as relevant.

• As a foundational registry, OpenCRVS is designed to share PII with other government systems, as prescribed in the laws and regulations of the jurisdiction where the system is being implemented. Typically this is with foundational ID systems (e.g. National ID) and health systems (e.g. DHIS2). This feature of interoperability is very important as the universal data set of birth and deaths can help ensure government services are inclusive.
  National ID: OpenCRVS can integrate with any National ID system in order to reliably validate the existence of NID numbers provided during civil registration applications as well as reduce the time spent on the application form itself by pulling data from the NID system and auto-populate form fields.
  Use Cases: OpenCRVS can be integrated with a National ID system in a number of ways, depending on system capabilities. Current use cases include:
  - To validate the existence of a NID number
  - To auto-populate the form with data from the NID field to minimise required effort from registration staff
  - To create a National ID for a new registration when the event occurs.
  Health: Births and deaths often occur in health facilities and those that occur in the community can be dealt with by health staff at the community level. These actors already use digital health systems to conduct their work and much of the data required for birth/death notifications is already gathered. We know that health staff are busy and need to focus on life-saving activities rather than administrative ones. To address the opportunity that this data has for civil registration, OpenCRVS can integrate with existing health systems via a FHIR mediator (leveraging existing health standards) and can receive data from health systems for follow up within the OpenCRVS system.
  Use Cases: OpenCRVS can integrate with an existing health system via its OpenHIE compliant and FHIR standard interoperability layer, OpenHIM. Current use cases include:
  - To receive birth/death notification information from a health system
  - To allow Registration Agents and Registrars to view this data as an 'in-progress' application and complete it in OpenCRVS
  - To see disaggregated data related to the notifications received from health systems https://documentation.opencrvs.org/opencrvs-core/docs/system_overview/interoperability Interoperability standards were not available at the start of the project, so the OpenCRVS project has taken existing open standards (HL7/FHIR) and extended them for the purposes of integration with civil registration systems. Although not currently a recognised standard, we hope that these extensions become de-facto standards over time as their implementation becomes more widespread.

If yes - does the project ensure the privacy, security and integrity of this data and/or content collection and has it taken steps to prevent adverse impacts resulting from its collection, storage and distribution.

Yes

If yes - please describe the steps, and include a link to the privacy policy and/or terms of service:

Our mobile application and microservices are secure, protected by 2-Factor Authentication utilising OAuth JWT best practices. Our privacy policy can be found here: https://www.plan.org.au/privacy-policy/
In order to understand and mitigate the risks (particularly for children) within a digital civil registration system, the project created “Identifying and addressing risks to children in digitised birth registration systems: a step-by-step guide”. (https://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Issues/Children/BirthRegistrationMarginalized/PlanInternationalGeneva_4.pdf) If not anticipated, digital civil registration systems can present a number of child protection threats:
- Identity theft or fraud
- Privacy violation
- Targeting based on personal characteristics
- Personal security violation or exploitation
- Exclusion from the benefits of birth registration
The risk assessment tool, which forms part of this guide, should be used in collaboration with any OpenCRVS implementation to ensure these and other risks are identified and mitigated against. OpenCRVS has been designed specifically for low resource settings and to overcome the barriers typically seen in countries where birth and death registration is low. See https://documentation.opencrvs.org/opencrvs-core/docs/system_overview/keyFeatures which shows features that facilitate inclusion and aim to mitigate the risk that individuals are disadvantaged because they are not registered in the civil registry.

Does this project collect, store or distribute content?

No

If yes - what kinds of content does this project, collect, store or distribute? (i.e. childrens books)

Not Applicable

If yes - does this project have policies that describe what is considered innappropriate content? (i.e. child sexual abuse materials)

Not Applicable

If yes - please link to the relevant policy/guidelines/documentation.

Not Applicable

If yes - does this project have policies and processes for detecting and moderating innappropriate/illegal content?

Not Applicable

If yes - please describe the policies and processes for detecting, reporting and removing innapropriate/illegal content (Please include the average response time for assessment and/or action. Link to any policies or descriptions of how inappropriate content is handled):

Not Applicable

Does this project facilitate interactions with or between users or contributors?

No

If yes - does the project take steps to address the safety and security of underage users?

Not Applicable

If yes - please describe the steps this project takes to address risk or prevent access by underage users:

Not Applicable

If yes - does the project help users and contributors protect themselves against grief, abuse, and harassment?

Not Applicable

If yes - please describe the steps taken to help users protect themselves.

Not Applicable