"Diana Bouglas" <[email protected]> wrote : > Geoff Swinfield was invited to attend a small, one-off focus group > meeting, >with three other users of the certificate ordering system. I > wonder if this might >have been connected to John's approach by GRO. It > was hosted by >IPS/GRO representatives on Tuesday (21 Sep). One was from > Southport >and the others were London-based and weren't so familiar with > the specifics >of the service. He was by far the heaviest user present > (about 20 certs a >month). The other three had used the system very > little. > > They seemed to be concerned about why people might not use their online > >ordering service, eg ordering from local registrars or through > intermediaries >such as Ancestry and also not ordering at all, perhaps > using parish register >versions of marriages or just relying on the index > entries. The contact I had was to complete a questionnaire regarding possible options for the future supply of certificates. Delivery by e-mail was in there somewhere and variable pricing with some sort of subscription-type option also. This was around March or April this year and I assumed was a response to a significant reduction in demand following the huge price rise in April 2010; one of the questions did ask for approximate numbers of certificates bought in earlier years compared with 2010/11. > The one thing they were very definite about was that their digitisation > >program (DOVE, MAGPIE etc) is now half complete but will not be > >continuing because of lack of funding. Recent BMD indexes will continue > to >be produced on fiche but will not be placed online. Which, given their apparent concerns about people not using the system, makes the kind of sense one tends to expect, and despair of, from government departments, notwithstanding the current financial constraints. >Also discussed were the possibility of obtaining cheaper, uncertified >copies of >historical records (as with ScotlandsPeople) and also the >withdrawal of the >checking point option. I think that the questionnaire also mentioned what might be called 'unofficial' certificates for family history purposes, too. John B Leic., Eng