The IRN states that "online monitoring of the stages of the nationality process" will continue to exist on the new platform, "with greater transparency and clarity", but does not provide details.
Monitoring the progress of the "dots" indicating the stage of the application for Portuguese nationality on the website of the Institute of Registries and Notaries (IRN) will no longer be a routine for those waiting for the process to be completed. The new IRN Nationality Platform will start operating this Tuesday, October 1st, with the promise that it will "help to speed up the processing of applications and increase the efficiency of the Registration Services", the body informed in a statement.
The new system will initially go live at the Central Registry Office in Lisbon and the Central Archive in Porto . From November 4th, it will be available at 16 nationality offices across the country, which operate in civil registry services.
With the new platform, the IRN says it will be possible to digitize the documents presented by the applicant upon entry of the application, extract the person's identification data using artificial intelligence resources, automatically insert the information into the system and classify the process, also automatically, according to the type of application.
"With these automations, the customer service employee will only have to validate the information uploaded, saving an estimated 1 hour and 13 minutes in a process that could take 1 hour and 50 minutes . In the area of Nationality, the reception of paper documentation is the main source of inefficiencies, adding bureaucratic and logistical burdens and the risk of fraud to the process", states the IRN.
Another change is that the IRN's communication with other entities, such as AIMA and security forces, which are consulted in the granting of nationality, will now be "more automated" . In addition, the new platform is integrated with the civil registry system, " allowing the birth certificate to be automatically registered with the order granting nationality . This is expected to increase the capacity of the services to process nationality applications by 50%", explains the IRN.
End of the balls
The IRN has started to inform lawyers seeking updates on ongoing cases. In the email response , which was repeated to several professionals, the entity says that "at this time, the SITPRO platform (of the balls) has been discontinued, so the information contained therein should not be taken into account. Soon, and as the cases are migrating, it will be possible to check the status of the case on the new platform" .
Although the current platform has already been closed by the IRN, those with ongoing processes can still access the website with the tracking code and see the colored balls.
The institute states that " online monitoring of the process phases " will continue to exist on the new platform, " with greater transparency and clarity ".