National Population Register (NPR) in Bangladesh perspective

The active development of various register systems in Bangladesh which interact poorly with each other and do not constitute a holistic system. The need is to consider the experience of advanced developed countries in creating a full-fledged NPR. Therefore, the paper will focus on the development of NPR. In order to fulfill the objectives, baseline data was obtained from the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) in collaboration with the National Household Database (NHD) project under the Ministry of Planning. In NHD, all the households were recorded in a census-like fashion. A total of 14 basic types of data are available for creating NPR. The primary element of the system is the Personal Identification Number (PIN). This unique identifier has been the core element of the NPR. Another element in the system is the Family tree. NHD also covered family relationships and dwellings, allowing data on individuals to be linked by family and household head. Some 10 or 11-digit PIN numbers will be generated by the NPR authority with considered as standard practice. The PIN number for a child will be generated when thire parents register the child’s birth. The local ‘Birth & Death Registration’ office will be responsible for NPR data updating. The secondary element in the system is “One Person One File” (OPOF). Each personal file in the NPR will hold the history of changes in terms of the registered date and the action that triggered the change of personal data in the register. Once the OPOF objective is ensured, the second objective, “register once-multiple use”, becomes important. The other objective ensures data quality and the reproducibility of NPR data. The novelty of the paper lies in a generalized and comparative analysis of the population register of Bangladesh.

Keywords: One person one file, Family tree, Register once-multiple use, PIN.