4.2.2 Set up administrative address divisions
🗺️ Configuring Administrative Divisions
Now that your country configuration repository is ready, you can begin defining your administrative divisions — the geographic structure that allows OpenCRVS to correctly locate registrations, associate offices within the national hierarchy, and generate accurate performance analytics and vital statistics.
🧩 Why Administrative Divisions Matter
A consistent administrative structure is essential for:
Geo-locating registrations and determining where each event occurs.
Positioning registration offices within the national hierarchy (e.g., region → district → sub-district).
Generating key metrics such as registration completeness, timeliness, and population coverage.
Exporting statistics to national and international standards (e.g., SDG 16.9 indicators).
Even though OpenCRVS recognises that many countries have non-standardised addressing systems, particularly in rural or informal settlements, this should never be a barrier to registration.
To support this, OpenCRVS allows optional and unstandardised address lines in event configuration. These free-text address fields can capture local names or descriptions while still maintaining a structured hierarchy for analytics.
🏛️ Defining Your Hierarchy Levels
Each country must define a set of standardised administrative levels — for example:
1
Region
“Northern Region”
2
District
“Gulu District”
3
Sub-County
“Awach Sub-County”
4
Village (optional)
“Lalogi Village”
You can present these levels in the user interface using any labels you prefer (e.g., “Province”, “Zone”, “Ward”), depending on your country’s terminology.
These levels will automatically appear as dropdowns in your event declaration forms wherever an ADDRESS component is used.
📊 Administrative Divisions and Statistics
Administrative divisions also underpin OpenCRVS analytics. One of the most important performance indicators for civil registration systems is the completeness rate — the percentage of events registered compared to the expected number of events in a given area and timeframe.
Completeness rates are a key international benchmark for CRVS performance and are used to track Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) target 16.9:
“By 2030, provide legal identity for all, including birth registration.”
To calculate completeness rates, OpenCRVS uses the following formulas:
Total
((crude birth or death rate * total population) / 1000) * (target estimated days / 365)
Male
((crude birth or death rate * male population) / 1000) * (target estimated days / 365)
Female
((crude birth or death rate * female population) / 1000) * (target estimated days / 365)
To enable these calculations, you must obtain from your national statistical office:
The crude birth rate and crude death rate
The total population, broken down by gender
Data for your highest administrative level (e.g., State, Province, or Admin Level 1 following the Humanitarian Data Exchange (Humdata) standard)
🧾 Creating Source Files
Once you have gathered your administrative division data, this section will help you:
Create source files in your repository that define your hierarchy, populations, and rates.
These files will later be used to seed the database.
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