Definition
XML schema that enables the electronic exchange of Civil Status Certificates extracts concerning marriage registration. This solution was issued in pursuance of the Convention 16 signed at Vienna on September 8, 1976.
Objectives
- Enables the electronic exchange of extract from marriage registration between different countries and offices;
- Contains the minimum set of mandatory fields that must be filled in order for the extract from marriage registration to be valid;
- Allows to overcome the language barrier by setting codes that can be translated to all languages of ICCS using a translation matrix.
Owner
The International Commission on Civil Status (ICCS), an intergovernmental organisation consisting of 15 member states, intends to facilitate the cross-border exchange of information regarding civil status data between registrars. Since its foundation in 1948, the ICCS organization has developed 33 conventions, written 9 recommendations to its member states and compiled documentation on legislation and case-law of the member states.
Intended audience
Convention 16 has been:
- signed by 1 country;
- ratified by 10 countries;
- accessed by 9 countries;
Click here for more details about state of signatures, ratifications and accessions as at 24 April 2014.
Long description
In the context of the active conventions, specific document templates have been formulated in order to facilitate the harmonized document creation by the member states. These templates guide the document completion since they impose:
- a specific structure,
- specific validation/business logic that should accompany the document completion, and
- a specific way of rendering the document according the language of the sender/receiver.
From the very beginning of the template generation process, a lot of aspects that target interoperability were taken under consideration. One of these aspects is multilingualism. In order to overcome the language barrier, which is a critical issue, ICCS has introduced a coded system where each literal that is rendered in the documents is accompanied by a code that can be translated to all languages of ICCS using a translation matrix (attached in every generated form).
Another aspect of interoperability relates to the legal consensus of the document’s context. Every convention contains the minimum set of mandatory fields that must be filled in order for this form to be valid.
