CRVS is essentially a fundamental administrative system. It is a combination of two different systems i.e. (i) Civil Registration and (ii) Vital Statistics.

Civil registration is universal, continuous, permanent and compulsory recording and documenting of vital events in a person’s life (including birth, death, cause of death, marriage, divorce, adoption, and migration).

Vital Statistics is the total process of (a) collecting information by civil registration or enumeration on the frequency or occurrence of specified and defined vital events, as well as relevant characteristics of the events themselves and the person or persons concerned, and (b) compiling, processing, analyzing, evaluating, presenting and disseminating these data in statistical form.