New Portuguese Citizenship Platform Reduces the Applications Processing Time
The Portuguese Civil Registry launched on 1 October 2024 a new version of the internal platform used by the Portuguese Civil Registry (IRN), which aims to improve the processing time of the citizenship applications.
With new functionalities, automation and artificial intelligence, this new platform will turn the process of entry, analysis and final decision of the citizenship applications less bureaucratic, which is expected to considerably reduce the time of the preliminary analysis stage.
The new functionalities make it possible to:
- Automatically digitize the documents submitted by the applicant at the moment of the application submission;
- Extract the applicant's identification data using artificial intelligence and automatically insert it into the system;
- Automatically classify the file according to the type of application.
With these automated features, the customer service employee will only have to validate the information uploaded, which will increase the internal efficiency of the services.
The main source of inefficiency that creates the huge backlog that civil registry is facing is receiving paper documentation, adding to the bureaucratic and logistical burden and the risk of fraud. For that reason, from now on, all types of requests will be processed on the new platform, where interactions with applicants and their representatives will be done electronically, guaranteeing security and transparency.
Also, the communications with external entities which must be consulted during the process, and that represented the most time-consuming stage of the application, are now fully dematerialized and more automated. Also, the new platform is integrated with the civil registry system, allowing the birth registration to be entered automatically with the order granting nationality.
Having this said, although this new platform is a great starting point considering that it will make the first steps of the processes quicker and more efficient, it is important to note that this will only be applicable to the new applications that entered after 1 October at the services.
