There's life in the old bird yet...!
This month's Family Tree Magazine (November issue) has an exclusive news story from Chris Pomeroy concerning the much maligned English and Welsh DOVE project - the Digitisation of Vital Events - which stalled spectacularly several months ago when contractors Siemens failed to have their contract renewed just half way through the project. When launched in 2002, the aim of DOVE was create an index and digitised images for birth, marriage and death certificates for England and Wales. The project was not to be publically accessible initially, though a public service would surely have followed, along the lines of ScotlandsPeople.
The news now is that a procurement process will apparently take place at some stage over the next six months to find a new contractor to complete the project's indexing, though not, it is emphasised, to put the results online, which is stated to be a future aspiration after the indexing stage is complete.
ScotlandsPeople, from the efforts of the General Register Office for Scotland, has clearly shown how such a service can be created. Why the GRO in other parts of the UK cannot serve their own constituency as well as SP has done for Scotland, both online and at the SP Centre (and previously at the GROS itself) is something that those living in England and Wales may well wish to ask those in Southport to provide an answer for. I have long believed that those living south of the border, and indeed in Northern Ireland, should be provided with the same access to their heritage as those of us north of the border. One does wonder why the majority of the UK should be discriminated against in such a way...
Chris
www.ScotlandsGreatestStory.co.uk
Professional genealogical problem solving and research
http://twitter.com/ChrisMPaton
Another green shoot on the way out of recession?
ReplyDeleteI wonder what the Tories will do with the project?