Availability: Vital statistics

To what extent is civil registration and vital statistics (CRVS) information available as open data?

Definitions

Definitions and Identification

To be useful for population health purposes, civil registration and vital statistics (CRVS) data should include its level of completeness by province, state, county, or other relevant regional category and list causes of death standardized to at least the 10th version of the International Classification of Causes of Death or other easily interoperable standard.

Birth information should include at least details about the child, the birth, parents, and the registration process. Mortality information should include at least data about age, sex, geographic location, and cause of death. (These correspond to the minimums articulated in WHO's 2012 CRVS Resource Kit, pages 113–114.)

Among other functions, it should be possible to use CRVS data to:

• assess long-term health patterns;
• identify disparities in causes of death with regard to at least sex, age, and location;
• track the progress of efforts to address child mortality, maternal mortality, and mortality related to specific causes of death;
• verify and update mortality data from health monitoring systems;
• provide a foundation for calculating and understanding excess deaths for large-scale disease events such as COVID-19;
• monitor the spread and distribution of noncommunicable diseases.

Note: This indicator focuses specifically on health uses of CRVS systems. However, CRVS systems inform many areas of governance and planning. The birth registration CRVS provides is also fundamental for establishing contemporary legal identities, and CRVS data is key to planning around education, migration, employment, cities and housing, and many other areas.

Research Guidance

Starting points

• Sources:
  • The Centre of Excellence for CRVS Systems host profiles for 27 different countries around the world, that include detailed information about CRVS systems, what they contain, and what agencies manage them.
  • UNICEF hosts profiles of CRVS systems for countries in sub-Saharan Africa, drawing on information from 2016–2017; while profiles don't link directly to relevant datasets, they offer insights into what data may be being collected in your country and what agencies are likely to be involved.
  • The Africa Programme for Accelerated Improvement of Civil Registration and Vital Statistics (APAI-CRVS) assessed the effects of COVID-19 on CRVS systems in countries in Africa in April 2020. A broader technical brief is also available.
• Search:
  • Websites of your country's national statistical office, civil registration authority, center for health statistics, and health department.
  • Websites of civil society organizations focused on statelessness, gender equality and nationality laws, improving identity and birth registration, or issues related to being "undocumented."
• Consult:
  • Officers of civil society organizations focused on statelessness, gender equality and nationality laws, improving identity and birth registration, or issues related to being "undocumented."
  • Academic or policy researchers who study population health, population fertility rates, childhood or maternal mortality, or other types of mortality or morbidity.
  • Officers of civil society organizations dedicated to the eradication of diseases that can cause death.

What to look for?

Look for evidence that can answer the following questions:

• Does the data include information on the completeness of vital statistics in different provinces, counties, or regions of the country? Or is it presented without any assessment of its various components' completeness?
• Is cause of death standardized to some version of the International Classification of the Causes of Death (ICD) or a related, interoperable standard?
• Is mortality data tabulated separately by at least age, sex, geographic location, and underlying cause of death?
• Does birth data include relevant details about the child and the child's parents at the time of birth?
• Does birth data include relevant details about birth occurrence and registration?
• Does birth data include relevant details prenatal case, delivery, and live birth?

National and sub-national considerations

CRVS data is typically published at the national level, by national statistics offices. Sub-national considerations, however, may arise in relation to the completeness of the data. Some countries, rather than publish incomplete data with guidance about data limitations, instead choose not to publish updated information at all.

To address this possibility, focus on national government first, and then assess whether:

• National datasets also include data from sub-national or local government units;
• Equivalent data exists for a selection of sub-national or local government units, but is not nationally aggregated;

To assess countries where the most up-to-date CRVS data is organized sub-nationally, researchers should select the strongest example of sub-national practice, and then indicate whether this is an outlier or an example of widespread practice.

Question sub-components

Show/hide supporting questions

Existence

• Is this data available online in any form?
  • Data is not available online.

    Supporting questions: Are there other offline ways to access this data in the country? (e.g., attending an office to inspect it).

  • Data is available, but not as a result of government action.

    Supporting questions: If government is not providing access to data, how is this data available? Please provide a URL(s) for where this data can be found.

  • Data is available from government, or because of government actions.

    Supporting questions: Please provide a URL(s) for where this data can be found.

Elements

• Data fields and quality (I):

• The data includes information on data limitations, specifically on the completeness of vital statistics in different provinces, counties, or regions of the country. (No, Partially, Yes)

  Supporting questions (conditional)

  If Partially or Yes: If CRVS data can be found in multiple datasets, please provide the URL(s) where information on the completeness of the data is located.

  If Partially: Please briefly explain your 'Partially' answer.

• Cause of death is standardized to the International Classification of Causes of Death (ICD) or a related, fully interoperable standard. (No, Partially, Yes) Score this as "partially" if a country uses a standard that is only partially interoperable, or if a country uses a version of the ICD prior to ICD 10 (ICD is scheduled to update to version 11 in January 2022), or if only part of the data is standardized.

  Supporting questions (conditional)

  If Partially or Yes: If CRVS data can be found in multiple datasets, please provide the URL(s) where information about cause of death standardization is located.

  If Partially: Please briefly explain your 'Partially' answer.

• Data fields and quality (II):

• Mortality information includes data about age, sex and/or gender, geographic location, and cause of death. (No, Partially, Yes)

  Supporting questions (conditional)

  If Partially or Yes: If CRVS data can be found in multiple datasets, please provide the URL(s) where mortality data is located.

  If Partially: Please briefly explain your 'Partially' answer.

• Birth information includes data about sex and/or assigned gender of child, gestational age, and birth weight. (No, Partially, Yes)

  Supporting questions (conditional)

  If Partially or Yes: If CRVS data can be found in multiple datasets, please provide the URL(s) where the birth specifics of the child are located.

  If Partially: Please briefly explain your 'Partially' answer.

• Birth information includes data about live-birth order and interval between last and previous live births to mother. (No, Partially, Yes)

  Supporting questions (conditional)

  If Partially or Yes: If CRVS data can be found in multiple datasets, please provide the URL(s) where live-birth specifics are located.

  If Partially: Please briefly explain your 'Partially' answer.

• Birth information includes data about place of occurrence, place of usual residence of mother, and month of occurrence. (No, Partially, Yes)

  Supporting questions (conditional)

  If Partially or Yes: If CRVS data can be found in multiple datasets, please provide the URL(s) where details about birth occurrence are located.

  If Partially: Please briefly explain your 'Partially' answer.

• Birth information includes data about place of registration and month of registration. (No, Partially, Yes)

  Supporting questions (conditional)

  If Partially or Yes: If CRVS data can be found in multiple datasets, please provide the URL(s) where details about birth registration are located.

  If Partially: Please briefly explain your 'Partially' answer.

• Birth information includes data about age, educational attainment, and ethnic and/or national group of mother. (No, Partially, Yes)

  Supporting questions (conditional)

  If Partially or Yes: If CRVS data can be found in multiple datasets, please provide the URL(s) where maternal birth details are located.

  If Partially: Please briefly explain your 'Partially' answer.

• Birth information includes data about age of father and place of usual residence. (No, Partially, Yes)

  Supporting questions (conditional)

  If Partially or Yes: If CRVS data can be found in multiple datasets, please provide the URL(s) where paternal birth details are located.

  If Partially: Please briefly explain your 'Partially' answer.

• Birth information includes data about site of delivery, attendant at birth, and month in which prenatal care began. (No, Partially, Yes)

  Supporting questions (conditional)

  If Partially or Yes: If CRVS data can be found in multiple datasets, please provide the URL(s) where delivery and prenatal details are located.

  If Partially: Please briefly explain your 'Partially' answer.

• Data openness, timing, and structure:

• Dataset is available free of charge. (No, Partially, Yes)

  Supporting questions (conditional)

  If Partially: Please briefly explain your 'Partially' answer.

• Data is openly licensed. (No, Partially, Yes)

  Supporting questions (conditional)

  If No: If there are explicit restrictions placed on re-use of the dataset, briefly describe those here.

  If Partially or Yes: If the data is provided with an explicit open license, please provide the name of the license, or a link to it here.

• Data is available in all the country’s official or national languages. If the country has no official or national languages, data is available in the major languages of the country. (No, Partially, Yes) Assess this against the list of official, national, or in-use languages you provided as part of your response to the governance indicator that asks, "To what extent do relevant laws, regulations, policies, and guidance require that data collection and publication processes be available in the country’s official or national languages?"

  Supporting questions (conditional)

  If Partially or Yes: Please briefly describe the language coverage available.

• There are accessible and open official tools available to help users explore data. (No, Partially , Yes) Answer 'Partially' if tools make it possible to get at extracts of data without having to download a full dataset. Answer 'Yes' if there is an interactive tool that displays user-filtered extracts of the data to answer simple questions without downloading data at all.

  Supporting questions (conditional)

  If Partially or Yes: Please provide URL.

  If Partially : What are the main barriers to accessibility and usability?

• Data is timely and updated. (No, Partially, Yes)

  Supporting questions (conditional)

  If Partially or Yes: When was the most recent update to this dataset?

• Historical data is available that allows users to track change over time. (No, Partially, Yes)

  Supporting questions (conditional)

  If Partially: Please briefly explain your 'Partially' answer.

  If Partially or Yes: For what time period(s) (e.g., start and end dates) is data available?

• Data is provided in machine-readable format(s) (No, Partially, Yes)

  Supporting questions (conditional)

  If Partially or Yes: Please provide a URL where this machine-readable data can be found. (Additional URLs can be included in the justification and supporting evidence)

  If Partially or Yes: Please provide a comma separated list of the formats available? (E.g. csv, json)

  If Partially: What prevents you from assessing this data as fully machine-readable?

• The machine-readable dataset is available as a whole (No, Partially, Yes) Answer no if it's only possible to access individual records; Answer partially if it's possible to export extracts of the data; Answer yes if there are bulk downloads or APIs providing access to the whole dataset without financial, technical or legal barriers.

  Supporting questions (conditional)

  If Partially or Yes: Please provide a URL where bulk download access is available or described.

  If Partially or Yes: If bulk access is provided through an API, please provide a link to where the API is described.

  If Partially: Please briefly explain your 'Partially' answer.

• Untitled section

• This information is missing required data. (There is no evidence of data gaps., There is evidence that a portion of mandated data is missing., There is evidence of widespread omissions in mandated data.) In cases where the indicator itself identifies a dataset(s) to assess against or a separate governance indicator has asked you to determine data requirements of a relevant governing framework, assess against that. In cases where there is no such identified dataset(s) or related governance indicator, assess based on the parameters laid out in the publication of the information (e.g., are some fields entirely empty when they shouldn't be?), your local knowledge (e.g., if the data is supposed to include information for all public officials, does the number of total entries look right?), and any broader research you may have done for this theme (e.g., have media articles decried the incompleteness of the data?).

  Supporting questions (conditional)

  If There is evidence that a portion of mandated data is missing. or There is evidence of widespread omissions in mandated data.: Please briefly explain.

• The availability of this data has been affected by government response to COVID-19. (No, Partially, Yes)

  Supporting questions (conditional)

  If Partially or Yes: Please briefly describe how COVID-19 affected the availability of this data.

Extent

• How comprehensive is the data assessed for this question?
  • The data assessed covers one or more localities, but there are many other localities without available data, or with data of a lesser quality.

    Supporting questions: Which locality does this data cover?

  • The data assessed covers one or more localities, and is a representative example of the kind of data that can be found for most but not all localities.

    Supporting questions: Which localities does this data cover?

  • The data assessed provides national coverage.

Indicator Justification

Understanding and improving population health is fundamental to ensuring healthy lives and promoting well-being for all at all ages (SDG 3). More specifically, contemporary civil registration and vital statistics (CRVS) systems serve as key tools for tracking progress on mortality (SDG 3.1, 3.2, 3.4, 3.6, 3.9); CRVS systems also provide basic health information that supports research on vaccines and medicines (SDG 3.B) and strengthens capacities for managing national and global health risks (SDG 3.D). In addition to being critical for understanding population health, CRVS systems also directly support SDG 16.9, "By 2030, provide legal identity for all, including birth registration." To support establishing and improving CRVS systems, the UN publishes its Principles and Recommendations for a Vital Statistics System.

With their extensive coverage, CRVS systems have been critical to understanding the coronavirus pandemic, particularly but not exclusively with regard to understanding the pandemic's excess deaths. At the same time, researchers have identified a number of clear areas for improving CRVS systems (see, e.g., WHO's 2012 CRVS Resource Kit). One significant problem lies in handling incomplete reporting. Reporting disparities surface notably with regard to gender and location. Although there are accepted principles for working with incomplete CRVS data, some authorities may decline to publish relevant but incomplete data at all—or publish it without noting its level of completeness. A second key problem, specifically with using mortality data to understand and improve population health, lies in a lack of standardization of causes of death.