Enhancing UNHCR’s global registration system
UNHCR’s development of its Population Registration and Identity Management Eco-System (PRIMES), which unifies registration, identity management and case management applications.
In this section
Overall objectives
The objective of this activity was to improve the quality and accessibility of UNHCR registration data and to increase its use.
Activity description
The JDC provided funding to support the development of PRIMES, specifically:
- Technical work to migrate individual records from proGres v3, an offline, system of separate databases, to proGres v4, a centralized, integrated platform;
- The development of tools and dashboards to enable regional and country operations to monitor and improve data quality;
- Development of the Dataport, a data warehouse and business intelligence tool that automatically pulls data from proGres and allows users to analyze and visualize data, including a range of socioeconomic indicators; and
- The transfer of proGres data to the Raw Internal Data Library (RIDL), where it can be curated, anonymized and disseminated, and considered for subsequent migration to the Microdata Library (MDL).
Background and Context
UNHCR collects and manages the world’s largest and most comprehensive dataset on refugees and asylum seekers. This dataset includes biographical, location and some socioeconomic data, and enables UNHCR and its government partners to plan, deliver and monitor vital protection and assistance services for refugees and asylum-seekers. It can also be used by development and research institutions to construct sampling frames (that is, the source data from which a representative sample is drawn) for household surveys of refugees to enable analysis of the socioeconomic dimensions of refugee crises.
UNHCR’s registration data is stored in its Population Registration and Identity Management Eco-System (PRIMES), which brings together UNHCR’s registration, identity management and case management applications into one interoperable system. PRIMES includes proGres, UNHCR’s registration application, as well as the Rapid Application (RApp), which enables offline collection of data.
Additional resources
More activities
Refugee Data Finder
A platform of socioeconomic, wellbeing and living standards statistics on forcibly displaced populations that incorporates survey-based indicators, developing standards for inclusion and aggregation producing data that will be comparable over time and across countries.
UNHCR Forced Displacement Survey
Three pilot surveys, in Cameroon, Pakistan and South Sudan of the Forced Displacement Survey, the first-of-its-kind survey programme will produce data on refugees that is multi-sectoral, comparable across countries, and fully aligned with international measurement standards.
UNHCR’s Microdata Library
Support to UNHCR to discover, clean, catalogue and anonymize existing data for its microdata library to promote the availability and accessibility of data to external partners such as academics and researchers.