Privacy Commissioner - Te Mana Matapono Matatapu

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BDM/MSD Identity Verification Programme

• Annual Report
• Technical information
• System description
• Historical activity

Annual Report

Purpose: To confirm the validity of birth certificates used by clients when applying for financial assistance, and also to verify that clients were not on the New Zealand Deaths' Register.

Year commenced: 2007

Features: The programme operates daily using data transferred by CD every quarter.
BDM disclosure to MSD: BDM provides birth and death information covering the period of 90 years prior to the extract date.

The birth details include the full name, gender, birth date and place, birth registration number and full name of both mother and father. The death details include the full name, gender, birth date, death date, home address, death registration number and spouse's full name.

2008/09 activity:

Benefit applications processed	489,214
Possible matches identified	21,582
Matches that required no further action	5,417
Letters advising update of information	2,051
Notices of possible adverse action	54
Challenges	0
Overpayments established	1
Value of overpayments established	$28.39
Cases referred for further investigation	7

Commentary: To reduce the processing time and costs of this programme, MSD has limited the records included in the programme to applications where an ongoing benefit has been granted. Prior to February 2009, all benefit applications were included in the programme, including those for small one-off payments.

Compliance: Compliant.

Technical information

Information matching provision	Births, Deaths, and Marriages Registration Act 1995, s.78A
Year authorised	2001
Programme type	Auditing data quality Detecting illegal behaviour
Unique identifiers	Birth and Death Registration numbers

System description

BDM provides to MSD, on an encrypted CD, a file containing birth and death records covering the period of 90 years prior to the extract date. The birth details include the full name, gender, birth date and place, birth registration number, and full name of both mother and father. The death details include the full name, gender, birth date, death date, home address, death registration number, and spouse's full name.

MSD compares the birth and death information against replica copies of MSD's core application databases held on the MSD Data Warehouse. MSD currently checks the birth and death information against MSD clients that have been granted financial assistance the previous day.

The matching algorithm used by MSD produces positive matches that are weighted to indicate the probability that an MSD client is the person on the births or deaths registers. The birth records of interest are those that do not match, conversely it is the death records that match that are of interest. Where an exact birth record match occurs, details of the Social Welfare Number (SWN) and Birth Record Number (BRN) are recorded in a register so that those records can be excluded from future matching cycles. Where a partial match or no match occurs, those records are downloaded from the MSD Data Warehouse into a separate IT interface (previously a spreadsheet) and are then manually scrutinised and verified. The information elements used for the matching include surname, first names, and date of birth.

MSD sends a letter to individuals if it identifies differences between information on the birth record and the information it holds, explaining that these details have been updated in MSD records. Any difference identified that involves a change in eligibility results in a notice of adverse action (s.103 notice) being sent.

Historical activity

Core results	2006/07	2007/08
Benefit applications processed	147,427	530,055
Client cases passed to NDMC	6,182	30,809
Legitimate cases	5,905	6,926
Letters advising update of information	835	2,643
Notices of adverse action	0	0
Cases referred for further investigation	0	1