The correction of clerical errors and entries in civil registry documents will soon be easier and faster with the Administrative Petition for Correction of Automated System (APCAS) of the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA), an official said.

In an interview, PSA-Negros Oriental provincial chief, Engineer Ariel Fortuito told the Philippine News Agency that the APCAS was recently pilot-tested in Kabankalan, Negros Occidental.

The APCAS setup is still ongoing, as it is an online platform for processing documents to streamline and digitalize the correction process, thereby cutting processing time, Fortuito said.

“Currently, the processing of documents requires sending hard copies to the PSA main office in Manila for approval,” he said.

With the APCAS, the PSA will go online, allowing all documents to be validated at the provincial office, and soft copies will be forwarded to its central office for validation, he added.

The current process involves the Local Civil Registry Office (LCRO) sending documents to the PSA central office for validation.

These would then be sent back to the LCRO before submission to the provincial PSA office, Fortuito said.

A birth certificate with a petition for correction of a misspelled name, for instance, will take at least five months before the new document is released to the petitioner.

Fortuito is optimistic that the APCAS will be operational before the end of the year. (PNA)