TWICKENHAM PARK, St Catherine:

The Registrar General's Depart-ment (RGD) is slated to roll out its new state of the art Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP) telephone system early February, said Chief Executive Officer, Dr Patricia Holness.

Speaking at a 'Think Tank' session at the Half-Way Tree Road head office of the Jamaica Information Service in St Andrew on Thursday, Dr Holness said that the new system will replace the previous one, which was destroyed during a lightning storm in late 2007, resulting in the loss of some 82 lines at the head office.

The new system will cost just over $11 million, and was installed by communications firm, Illuminat Jamaica. It will provide some 110 lines, when the system comes on stream, manned by 40 customer service representatives.

The RGD also acquired a number of additional telephone lines from two of the country's major telecommunications, entities and expanded their bandwidth, which will enable the head office to link, via a network, with the agency's nine regional offices.

representatives available

As a result, persons calling the head office who are unsuccessful in their attempts, will have their calls re-routed to the next available line and customer service representative, who will deal with their inquiry.

Holness also pointed out that the RGD would be undertaking an internal "stress test" to assess and analyse the system's capacity.

"We are ensuring that we have the maximum number of individuals calling us before we open up the lines to the public, to ensure that our voicemail and the automated attendant is not too overbearing to the customer," she pointed out.

She said that the RGD was looking forward to making sure that the telephone experience will now be first-world, so that individuals will be able to access the agency in a seamless fashion.