Birth Notification Service for Civil Registration in Kenya - SOA Model

Abstract

The aim of this study was to investigate application of modern ICT technologies in solving birth notification problems in rural communities and the sharing of birth information with various stakeholders. The specific objectives that study sought to address include; investigation of current birth notification system in Kenya, the processes, finding the appropriateness of application of service oriented architecture in designing and developing a prototype for birth notification solution. The intention was to allow real time pre-notification of birth events by parents, verification of that information by local agents, and sharing of that data for use by other government agents. The events that take place in hospitals were also included in a broad solution. The study used two approaches where case study of a remote Sub County of injara in Garissa County was used to study rural events and processes. In this approach interviews and questionnaires were used to evaluate current processes as well as enquire the applicability of intended solution. Then IT product design and development was used to develop prototype based on service oriented methodology [1]. This is an iterative and incremental process of transforming organizational business processes to services until services are developed, deployed and can execute as expected. The prototype was developed where parents and guardians would notify birth events as soon as they happen, using SMS, web portal or mobile application. The testing and evaluation findings revealed that application of integrated services of SMS, Web application and Mobile application have positive implications in birth notification process. Study also found that these integrated services can improve birth notification experience both for rural events and hospital events as well as provide real time data for other consumers such as national health care insurers as well as statistical data consumers.