Effective CRVS systems play an important role in assisting countries to adequately plan for and respond to disasters, and it is important that CRVS systems are resilient enough to continue functioning in the event of a natural disaster. Pacific countries have had first-hand experience with this recently in responding to cyclones Pam and Winston, and have identified the role of CRVS in disasters as a regional priority. 

Plan International will start work to build OpenCRVS, an open-source, standards based, software platform for rights based CRVS. Within the framework of the 5 year (2016-2020) strategy and work programme of the APAI-CRVS, Plan International proposes to lead an initiative to develop a standards based open-source CRVS software platform, OpenCRVS. In the first phase, a prototype to showcase priority workflows to country stakeholders and development partners will be developed and should be ready by the end of August.

To make state services more accessible for citizens, 39 unified public service providing offices have been established in Armenia starting since November 2016. 

This is a unique program of the Government which aims at mitigating the worries of citizens and their burden of reaching the capital or the regional centers to obtain a document from a state authority.

In order to facilitate country-level access to technical expertise and assistance for strengthening CRVS systems, the Centre of Excellence launched a call for expressions of interest to invite professionals to apply for inclusion in a directory of experts. They are looking for mid-level and senior professionals with expertise and experience in one/several of the following fields: civil registration and vital statistics, public health, social and behavior change, law, digitization, statistics.