Requirements for a Model Vital Statistics System

The first step of this re-engineering initiative required us to develop consensus requirements for a model vital statistics system. Numerous sub-committee meetings, jointapplication development sessions, a walk-through of draft requirements, and other activities were conducted to develop these requirements, with extensive involvement of state and federal persons.  In fact, over 27 of the 57 NAPHSIS jurisdictions had at least one staff member involved in one or more of the requirements development processes. We sought this level of involvement because of our belief that the state and national vital statistics systems can only improve by drawing upon the vast store of knowledge at both the state and federal levels. 

We have now completed the draft requirements and actively seek your comments on the requirements posted at this web site.  Through a public review process, we believe that your comments will enrich these requirements even further and move us one step closer to having a model system. But most of all, keep in mind that this is your model and its long-term success relies on your input.

What is included in the Model Requirements?

Several documents are included in the body of requirements for your review.  These range from use case narratives and diagrams, systems requirements and business rules, glossary and acronyms to white papers such as vital records authentication and risk analysis, point of service ideas in re-engineering, and reports to be generated through a re-engineered system. Because of the volume of materials, we suggest that you download the materials to conduct a thorough review.  You should review any or all of the materials that interest you.  Please keep in mind that due to the size of the re-engineering project and the expected volume of comments, we have provided for a period of five weeks for this public review (January 27^th thru March 5^th).  Comments received after this period will be retained and used in future updates of the requirements.

How to review the Requirements?

To help you in the review of the artifacts, we have put together a WORD template form to capture your comments and have made it available on this web-site: Review Form Template Page.  Instructions on the proper way to download the form and use it in WORD are provided for you. We request that you please take the time to fill out this template form completely for EACH comment that you would like to make regarding an artifact and either email or fax the completed form to NAPHSIS. The status of your comments at each step of our review will be posted on the NAPHSIS website.

Also, we have put together the following two documents to help in you review the artifacts and related documents as well.  These are:

1. Index of use cases and artifacts to help you better locate the items of interest, and

2. Short descriptions of the artifact types to aid in your understanding of them.

Please remember that your feedback is essential to making the proposed model vital statistics system a better product for everybody’s benefit.

We look forward to hearing your comments about the requirements for a model system. Please send your comments to the attention of Rose Trasatti at rtrasatti@naphsis.org at the NAPHSIS headquarters.  Her phone numbers are: 301-563-6001 (Office) and 301-563-6012 (fax).

We sincerely thank you for your comments about our vital statistics system, one of the most important public health resources.

• Review Form Template Page