The Embassy of Colombia hosted the launch in Spain of the Web Civil Registry System (SRC Web), an innovative tool led by the National Civil Registry, in coordination with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Colombia.
This system will allow Colombians abroad to carry out civil registry registrations in real time, facilitating and speeding up identification procedures outside the country.
Spain becomes one of the first countries to implement this technology in the Colombian consulates in Madrid, Barcelona, and Valencia, following its successful implementation in cities like San Antonio del Táchira and Miami.
The presentation took place at the Central General Consulate of Colombia in Madrid and was attended by the national registrar, Hernán Penagos; the general consul, Javier Darío Higuera; and the plenipotentiary minister of the Embassy of Colombia, Alejandra Bonilla.
Consul Javier Darío stated at the presentation that “from today, every civil registry that is done, every identified document that is made at the general consulate of Colombia in Madrid, arrives immediately at the federal central of the presidency. It also establishes advances in more efficient and safer procedures. And something that is also very important, that Colombians abroad can carry out their procedures without having to wait for the records to be incorporated into the database.”
The Colombian consul emphasized the importance of this registry in light of the regularization process currently being carried out by the Government of Spain. “The importance of the institutional response on identification issues, to support Colombians in that process and seek to ensure they have access to the opportunities that the Government of Spain is providing. And therefore, to help them facilitate their integration within the Spanish community,” concluded Javier Darío.
For his part, the national registrar of Colombia, Hernán Penagos, indicated that these registry services “are already being implemented in the consulates of Miami and Caracas. The idea is to be able to massify them to many other consulates in different parts of the world that allow for agile and quick registration in the Civil Registry of Colombian entries that require it.”
With the application of this Civil Registry System, any online inquiry “already allows for immediate certification from Colombia of the quality of the information to proceed with the registration procedures of the Civil Registry and therefore the request, if necessary, for the identity card and citizenship card,” said the registrar. “There are 290,000 Colombians seeking to regularize themselves through the instruments provided by the Spanish government.”
Hernán Penagos concluded by referring to the benefits that this registry will have for the upcoming electoral process on May 31, which begins abroad a week earlier. “Our electoral management team has already installed a digitization station to optimize the publication of electoral minutes, a determining tool for electoral transparency in our country, and we will also have teams from the Registry delegated to support the electoral process in the country,” he indicated.