1. Bureau of Vital Records and Health Statistics (BVRHS) Vital Records Imaging Plan and System Upgrade
Date: September
Presenters: Terry Reusser – NMDOH CIO
Marc Kassouf – Chief, (BVRHS)
Rosanna Dill - Project Manager
Certification Phase: Initiation
1190 S. St. Francis Drive • Santa Fe, NM • Phone: • Fax: • nmhealth.org

2. Background Information
The New Mexico Bureau of Vital Records and Health Statistics (BVRHS) is charged with maintaining all of the original paper birth and death certificates, and original adoption, paternity, legal name change, and other legal amendment documents for the citizens of New Mexico. These vital records are used for identification purposes and to conduct legal affairs for those who were born and died in New Mexico.
Currently, since the database has a significant amount of missing data, the issuance of birth and death records is limited from the system. This limitation then requires manual intervention to search the paper records to locate the missing information and have it hand keyed into the system. Automation of this process would increase the efficiency of our Vital Records staff and provide better customer service to the citizens of New Mexico.
This project is intended to address the critical need to image and index the original vital records maintained by Vital Records. Since these records represent the identities of individuals, it would be reckless to keep them in jeopardy without backup copies. In addition to capturing the images of the original documents, the data that would be captured during this project would be populated in the Vital Records birth and death issuance database (E-Vitals – DAVE) which would allow for statewide issuance of all birth and death records for the state.
This request will encompass two initiatives. The first is to help safeguard the original documents entrusted to the bureau since they are the only copies of these records in existence. The need to image and index the millions of original records for safekeeping and for use if a disaster occurs and the original records are destroyed is imperative to the operations of Vital Records and Health Statistics as well as being able to serve the citizens of New Mexico. An additional benefit of funding this project is the use of the same software that would be purchased for the Vital Records project to be used by the Department of Health to assist them in more efficiently storing electronic images of important documents.

3. Funding Request and Sources:
For this Initiation Certification, we are requesting $N
For FY19-20, C2 funds were granted by the legislature in the amount of $2,750, for this project
An additional $X is being requested from C2 funds for FY20-21

4. Business Objectives
Protect the safety of the State of New Mexico’s original Vital Records (birth, death, adoption, paternity, legal name change, and other legal documents and their amendments)
Enhance business staff productivity by providing digital access to document artifacts
Provide quicker and better customer service to citizens

5. Technical Objectives
Image and index approximately 14,000,000 pages digitally for all events enabling digital retrieval and issuance of the state’s vital statistics, and be able to permanently, securely and archivally store original (paper) documents after scanning.
Define requirements to modify and increase functionality of the E-Vitals application and test enhancements to the application to insure proper functionality
Populate the state Vital Records system (E-Vitals) with missing and incomplete data and to capture legal documents that order a vital record to be amended
Establish processes and procedures for electronic document management including disaster recovery that can be later scaled up across all of DOH.

6. Tentative Schedule

7. Project Organization

8. Questions?