Our community newsletter puts a spotlight on people who have gone above and beyond in their efforts to support CRVS programmes in Asia and the Pacific, raise awareness of CRVS issues or lead CRVS improvement efforts in their home country or in the region.  This month, we would like to dedicate this issue of Insight to Jin Shan.

What is your current title and role?

Following the success of its soft launch for BruneiID App in November 2025, Ministry of Home Affairs (MOHA) and the Ministry of Transport and Infocommunications (MTIC) of Brunei Darussalam have officially rolled out the national digital identity system that functions as an electronic form of personal identification for individuals.

Japan’s digital identity system reached a pivotal milestone as  Matsumoto Hisashi, Minister for Digital Transformation, confirmed that more than 100 million My Number Cards have been issued, a figure reported in his official New Year’s Reflection and reaffirmed by independent coverage. This widespread adoption, now encompassing roughly 80 percent of the population, has positioned the card as Japan’s central digital identity credential, supporting a broad shift toward integrated public and private services.

After the pilot digital birth certificate programme in 2024 for people born in New South Wales, Australia, which enabled more than 1,400 participants to trial a standalone app offering secure access to digital birth records, the New South Wales (NSW) government is now advancing its digital identity agenda with the introduction of digital birth certificates (DBC) for residents aged 16 to 21, beginning in March 2026. The project is led by the NSW Registry of Births, Deaths & Marriages.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has released a technical manual for the assignment of causes of death via verbal autopsy (VA). The publication, Cause of Death Assignment by Physicians from Verbal Autopsy Data, establishes a standardized methodological framework for extracting clinical insights from interviews with caregivers in regions where formal medical certification is frequently unavailable.

In the Solomon Islands, where nearly 80% of deaths occur outside formal health facilities, the absence of reliable mortality data has long impeded effective health planning. A new collaboration between the Ministry of Health, the CDC Foundation, and Bloomberg Philanthropies’ Data for Health Initiative is aiming to close this gap by introducing innovative community-based reporting systems across the nation’s 900 islands.

Vietnam has approved a new National Action Program on Civil Registration and Vital Statistics (CRVS) for 2026–2030, marking a major step toward modernizing the country’s administrative data systems. The program aims to ensure that all vital events, births, deaths, marriages, and other civil status changes, are recorded accurately, promptly, and in digital formats.