4.2.3 Set up CR offices and Health facilities

Configuring Civil Registration Offices and Health Facilities

The next step is to prepare CSV files that define all the civil registration offices and health facilities in your country. These locations are critical for mapping where registration activities take place and where births and deaths occur in medical settings.

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🗂️ Data Overview

You will import two main categories of locations into OpenCRVS:

Location Type	Purpose
CRVS_OFFICE	Civil registration offices where staff work and events are registered
HEALTH_FACILITY	Medical institutions where births and deaths occur

These locations are used across the system for workflow management, reporting, and ineroperability.

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🏛️ Civil Registration Offices (CRVS_OFFICE)

Each civil registration office represents a physical or administrative location where registration staff operate.

• Every civil registration employee is assigned to a single CRVS_OFFICE.

• Each CRVS_OFFICE belongs to an administrative division (e.g., district, province).

• CRVS_OFFICE locations provide a structure for:

  • Managing user access and permissions

  • Auditing user actions in the registration process

  • Linking each registration to the office where it was recorded

The CRVS_OFFICE name can be printed as the registration location on all issued certificates (e.g., birth or death certificates).

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🏥 Health Facilities (HEALTH_FACILITY)

Each health facility represents a place where births or deaths may occur under medical care.

• A HEALTH_FACILITY maps to real hospitals, clinics, or maternity wards in your country.

• When a birth or death occurs in a facility, its name is printed on the certificate as the place of birth or place of death.

• These facilities enable OpenCRVS to distinguish between:

  • Hospital births/deaths, and

  • Home or non-facility events

This distinction is important for both analytics and interoperability with national health information systems.

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📱 Offline Access for Field Agents

To enable offline registration, all configured facilities are automatically stored locally on Field Agents’ mobile devices during app installation.

⚠️ Because countries often have thousands of facilities, combined with potentially thousands of administrative levels, this step can often represent the largest initial data load when installing OpenCRVS.

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