Changes to the Births, Deaths and Marriages system in 2024

Updated: 20 February 2023

The Department of Internal Affairs Te Tari Taiwhenua will introduce a new civil registration system in 2024 as part of its 5-year-long Te Ara Manaaki programme. The programme’s aim is to make it easier and safer for people to connect with government and access services.

This will extend the number of DIA services that can be completed online, giving people more control over their own information and providing more security.

The system will enable people to access services and entitlements across multiples agencies without having to keep proving their identity and providing the same information again and again.

This change is also because the system supporting births, deaths, marriages and other life events is no longer fit for purpose, is expensive to maintain and unreliable.

As well as making it easier for people to use government services, those who provide information to Te Tari Taiwhenua will notice improvements. Funeral homes, marriage celebrants and midwives will provide their formal paperwork through a new online portal.

A likely new feature for whānau will be the option to include a baby’s iwi affiliation information as part of the Notification of Birth. This move was decided in collaboration with Iwi representatives. Read their FINAL report here: He Tātai Tupuna (PDF, 272KB). Use of that information will be for the benefit of Māori and decided by Māori.

The reason for considering this move was because other population data such as electoral rolls and census statistics are missing a large and growing group of Māori, thereby impeding strategic planning and resource allocation for iwi, hapū and Māori organisations.

There will be no change until 2024. Then there will be a Go Live period when the old system is turned off while the data from the births, deaths, marriages and other life event registries is migrated and the new system is turned on.

More detailed information about the change and its timing will be provided closer to the time of the change.

‘Civil registration’ is what people commonly call ‘births, deaths and marriages’. This term does not adequately reflect the wide scope of activities DIA now undertakes in this area, so civil registration is a more encompassing term. The scope includes births, deaths, marriages, marriage celebrants, proof of identity, paternity orders, adoption, change of name, change of registered sex, civil unions, Human Assisted Reproductive Technologies (HART) and surrogacy.

Got questions? Send them here: tearamanaaki@dia.govt.nz