Occasional Paper

But the DIGROS programme will achieve a lot more than making records available to family or other historians, because it is intended to capture current registration material as well. Another current GROS project is the Forward Electronic Register (FER), which will improve the standard of software used by registrars for current registrations, replacing the current Scottish Registration System, a first generation computer system that is not networked to GROS. A consequence of FER will be that local registration services could, via the Government Secure Extranet (GSX), get access to all of the records which have been digitally captured through DIGROS, permitting them to view images of records held by any registration office in Scotland. The need to maintain separate sets of registers locally, either on paper or microfiche, could disappear and a single image - recording the most up to date information - could be accessed centrally by even the remotest area office. This would allow local registration offices to expand the range of services they would be able to offer. Tests of a pilot system will take place from mid-April in a number of local registration offices.