Newsletter for celebrants: 14 March 2023

Jeff’s work over the past decade have meant our civil registration system can rightly be acknowledged as one of the best in the world. And his ability to relate to stakeholders was inspiring – I hope to continue the excellent relationship he had with your organisation.
Working in civil registration is not a new area for me. As with Jeff, I also hold a general manager position. In my case this is as Department of Internal Affairs’ General Manager of Operations. This sees me lead teams who are responsible for some of the core functions of the Registrar-General, including registering deaths and marriages and maintaining key IT systems that store civil registry information.

Next year is a very important one for me and my team – and for you. We will get a new civil registration system. The move to the new system will involve migrating around 80 million pieces of data off elderly IT systems to a new home in an Auckland based cloud data centre.

We’ll be learning to do some things differently and so will you.

I will provide updates on the new system in future editions of this newsletter. This will focus on what impact this will have on how you provide your information to us and what you may need to do differently. 

Finally, I want to add that I’m one of those people who can say, hand on heart, that I love every minute of my work – and I look forward to working with your organisation.

If you have issues you wish to raise with me I can be contacted at Russell.Burnard@dia.govt.nz.

Noho ora mai rā, 
Russell

New registry marriage vows

In collaboration with Celebrants Aotearoa, there is a new version of the registry marriage vows. This replaces all previous versions and can be used immediately. 

You can find the new vows at www.govt.nz/assets/Documents/Family-and-whanau/Registry-office-ceremony-marriage-vows.pdf

In conjunction with new vows, the requirements for registry ceremonies have been further refined and are listed before the vows at the link above. For example:

• maximum of 10 guests
• registry celebrants must be paid in advance
• couples should contact their celebrant at least 1-2 weeks in advance
• location of ceremony must be with 10km of celebrant.

Your celebrants team 

Ever wondered who the people are behind the emails you receive and are responsible for managing the annual renewal of celebrants? Here are your celebrants team that can be contacted at celebrants@dia.govt.nz: 

Take a sneak peek at our new civil registration system

Most of you are likely to already have some knowledge of the new civil registration system that’s coming in 2024. Here are the main points for those of you who need a quick catch-up:

The existing systems supporting our country’s Births, Deaths and Marriages registers need replacing because they’re expensive to maintain, unreliable and no longer fit for purpose. But just as important – we want to make it easier for people to access government services.

Three groups face a change to the way they provide information to us:

• funeral homes
• midwives, and hospital staff who submit a Notice of Birth
• and marriage celebrants

While the change isn’t huge, the significance and quantity of information these groups provide to us means we want people working in these areas to know about this change well in advance. We’re doing everything we can to ensure a smooth transition. This has included testing the system with groups of users to get feedback on what they think can be improved.

What’s not changing:

• Celebrants Online portal remains.
• Nothing changes for couples applying for a marriage licence – either online or via paper.

The way celebrants provide information to us on marriages and civil unions will not change but the system through which details are registered will look different. Celebrants who currently email Particulars of Marriage to us will instead use a new online portal called eRegistry.

To login to eRegistry you will need to use RealMe, as is already required to login to Celebrants Online. This provides robust security. Support can be provided for those celebrants, such as organisational celebrants, who might not have used RealMe before.

The information required remains the same, but the new system will look different. This is a screenshot of what it is likely to look like. Much of the first section – Celebrant details – will be automatically populated with your own information when you login.

There will be a go-live period when the old system is turned off – and data from the registries is migrated – and then the new system turned on. The system will be unavailable for 72 to 96 hours – possibly longer. A back-up plan will be in place and a plan to process urgent service requests.

The Registrar-General of Births, Deaths and Marriages, Russell Burnard, will be in regular contact via CANZ newsletters and Pānui, to ensure everyone is aware of the change and kept informed as we progress. Everyone will be well supported up to and through that go-live period in 2024.

In the meantime, if you have any questions – please send these to TalkTo.TeAraManaaki@govt.nz

Celebrants Aotearoa conference registrations are now open to ALL celebrants (not just CANZ members).

Early Bird prices are available until 10 April

Full programme details, speaker bio’s and ticketing are available at www.celebrantsaotearoa.co.nz/assets/Uploads/Celebrants-Aotearoa-Conference-Programme-2023-FINAL.pdf. 

Details of where to stay and the many fun activities that your partners/family can enjoy in Otepoti/Dunedin can be found at www.celebrantsaotearoa.co.nz/conference/.