A digital service that enables citizens to apply online for certified copies of birth, marriage, and death certificates, complete with secure verification and home delivery.
Now you can easily request certified copies of birth, marriage, and death certificates right from your home!
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Objective of the e-BMD Project
Issuing certified copies of birth, marriage, and death certificates is a primary function of the Registrar General's Department, and such copies are issued upon requests made by the public. However, tracing the relevant documents becomes difficult when the applicant is unaware of essential details such as the specific number, date, or the time period related to the event. The e-BMD (Electronic Birth, Marriage, and Death) project has been introduced to avoid highly time-consuming searches.
The main objectives of this program are maintaining a database, issuing certificates through the system, and sharing registered information on births, marriages, and deaths with other government agencies. In addition, establishing databases at regional-level offices enables the prompt retrieval of relevant documents, expedited issuance of certified copies, and the decentralization of the issuance of certified copies, which are other benefits of this program.
Online Land
As a component of the Online eBMD portal project, a new facility has been introduced enabling citizens to request certified copies of property deeds and documents online. This development aims to improve functions such as streamlining services and saving time.
Background of the e-BMD Project
For the registration of births, deaths, and marriages, the island is divided into registration divisions, and a registrar has been appointed for each such division. The relevant events are registered in triplicate, with the original copy archived at the Divisional Secretariat and the second copy at the Central Record Room. The third copy is issued free of charge to the informant in the case of a birth or death, and to the respective party in the case of a marriage. A certified copy is issued upon request based on public needs. To obtain a certified copy, if the document number and the date of registration are not provided, the relevant document must be searched for and a copy issued. As this requires examining records corresponding to a 03-month period around the event, it takes time for officials to manually turn pages and search for the relevant document.
To minimize this document search time and to ensure the security of the documents, the necessity of scanning birth, death, and marriage records to establish a database was recognized, and the e-BMD program was introduced to fulfill these requirements.
Inception of the e-BMD Project
The program was launched as a pilot project in the Colombo District in the year 2006, and subsequently, from the year 2009 onwards, this program was implemented in other districts of the island. Since 2019, by upgrading the old database, the capability was established to obtain a copy of a BMD record belonging to any district from any Divisional Secretariat across the entire island. With the creation of the new database, the old database that had been established at the Head Office up to that point, along with approximately 36 million scanned BMD records, were hosted on the ICTA LGC 2.0.
Accordingly, at present, the process of issuing BMD copies through the new database is carried out by the Additional District Registrar Divisions established in 341 Divisional Secretariats. In addition to this, this facility has been provided to all Land Registry Offices and Zonal Offices. By now, the facility has also been extended to locations such as the Central Record Room at Suhurupaya and the New Central Record Room in Pannipitiya.
