A Secure E-Government Portal for Birth Registration in Sokoto State

Birth registration rates in Sokoto State remain among the lowest in Nigeria, partly due to the inaccessibility of National Population Commission (NPC) offices in remote North West communities and reliance on paper-based processes. This study develops a secure e-government portal for birth registration in Sokoto State, enabling registration submissions from community health workers and local government offices. The portal is built using Django and PostgreSQL, with HTTPS enforcement, CSRF protection, and OTP-based authentication to secure sensitive demographic data. The iterative model guides development, with three cycles of refinement informed by interviews with 15 NPC officials and 30 community health workers across Sokoto, Isa, and Tambuwal local government areas. Features include guided birth registration forms, document upload for proof of birth, real-time application status tracking, NPC officer review dashboards, and bulk registration reporting. Testing evaluated form completion accuracy, server response time, and data integrity under concurrent user loads. Results show a 79 percent reduction in incomplete registration submissions and a 53 percent increase in rural submission rates during the pilot. The study recommends that the NPC integrate this portal with the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) database to streamline birth-to-identity documentation workflows. Keywords: birth registration, e-government, Sokoto State, NPC, demographic data