The Civil Status Service began to digitize the national archive documents. 4 million documents of the 20 million existing will be changed into a digital format at the initial stage of a project that will last for 24 months, IPN reports.

Minister of Justice Oleg Efrim told a news conference that the project forms part of the actions aimed at facilitating access to state services. The final goal is to enable the institutions to easily find civil status documents in digital format, without having to ask for them. Such projects are designed to ease the document asking and issuing process. In August, the Ministry of Justice will launch the e-apostle service.

Civil Status Service director Lucia Ciobanu said the archive includes more than 60,000 registers with over 20 million documents. Digitization will enable to keep them intact and to improve the work of the Service’s employees.

e-Government Center head Stela Mocan said the project to digitize the civil status documents costs €611,000 that will be taken from a loan of US$20 million granted by the World Bank for implementing the e-Government project. The authorities’ objective is to enable accessing online about 587 state services as Moldova already grew up a digital generation that cannot imagine life without advanced technology.

After the project launched on July 12 is completed, the Civil Statius Service will gradually digitize the entire archive. The project envisions developing a system for managing civil status documents and for training about 400 users and system managers.

After the civil status documents are digitized, the Moldovans will be able to apply for documents online, from Moldova and abroad, by using a digital signature, to pay for the services online and to receive the documents at any local office of the Civil Status Service, not only in Chisinau as now.