The officials were trained at a two-day workshop organised by Irembo in partnership with Ministry of Local Government (Minaloc) and National Identification Agency (NIDA).

Robert Habimana, the territory coordinator of Rwanda Online, said the workshop sought to create a relationship between local government officials with Irembo agents to be able to use Irembo services with ease.

"We want all the officers to have vast knowledge of the Irembo system to be able to better serve citizens and to coordinate with our agents in order to better help citizens in a faster manner with the help of the platform,” Habimana said.

On Irembo, citizens are able to access services such as birth and marriage certificates, drivers’ licence applications, land registration and transfer. The target is to have 100 services digitised by 2018.

Emmanuel Rugambage, the registration and notary officer, Gasabo District, said the training was necessary to help local leaders from the sectors to come up with solutions for their challenges and acquire  knowledge on the platform.

"This system is efficient, reliable, accurate, and easy to learn and work with. The training is going to help us a lot in analysing our day-to-day activities,” he said. 

During the workshop, it was resolved that sector executive secretaries and civil registrars work together with NIDA so that some of the records can be digitalised to ease  access to NIDA database.

"It is now going to be easier for us to access the NIDA system and get full access to information regarding the person seeking a certificate. This will reduce time and costs as some of the services done by NIDA can be done at the sector offices,” Rugambage said.

In a previous meeting, some sector leaders reported cases of mishandling book records, Rugambage said, noting that with the digital system, citizens are assured of safety of their records.

"There were instances where citizens would go to the sector offices to register a birth, marriage or death but some are recorded on a paper. With Irembo, and access to NIDA system, citizens will have to be directly registered online and records kept in the book at the same time as data in the book must be corresponding to the one in NIDA database,” he said.

"The good thing about logging the digital system is that you can service anyone anywhere and anytime,” Rugambage added.

Irembo platform is available online and on mobile with 32 services currently available to the public.

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