The articles written by the PÚBLICO Brasil team are written in the variant of the Portuguese language used in Brazil.
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Those who used the new platform to follow up on applications for Portuguese citizenship, launched on Tuesday (01/10) by the Institute of Registries and Notaries (IRN)had to deal with strong instability in the system, which was offline for hours. Consultations were only allowed again in the early afternoon of this Wednesday (02/10). The IRN Communications Office confirmed the problems.
According to lawyer Larissa Belo, specialized in immigration, the transition of information to the new platform generated instability. “Several people received erroneous information that their processes would be completed, when, in reality, many have not yet reached the conclusive phase. This error has already been confirmed in person at the IRN service counters”, he states.
For those who have passwords to monitor online processes, when typing the loginsthe following messages appeared in most cases: “Our systems are being updated, it was not possible to check the status of the process, please try later”. The IRN guarantees that it is working to remedy the flaws.
When launching the new platform, the Institute of Registries and Notaries (IRN) promised that it would be more user-friendly. “From my point of view, monitoring of the process by offices and citizens seems to be better. The steps will be more integrated with the system. By then, the process had already advanced, but the information was not appearing”, reports Larissa.
She also highlights that some processes had already been completed, but, in the previous system, they were still in phase two. “This generated a lot of problems. Clients felt that the processes were not progressing because of the lawyers. I believe that the new platform will be more intuitive and will improve access to information”, he adds.
With the complete digitalization of the citizenship process, the analysis steps drop from seven to four. “Everything indicates that, with the new platform, understanding the phases of the processes will reduce the anxiety of those waiting for a response from the IRN”, says Larissa.
Service counter
The new system for monitoring applications for Portuguese nationality promises to be a significant advance and should speed up, especially, in-person services. When citizens go to the IRN service counter with paper documentation, artificial intelligence will be used to read the data that will be confirmed by the server that will perform the scanning.
Since last year, lawyers and facilitators have been using their own online system to speed up processes. “We digitize all documentation and send the originals only in mandatory cases, such as cases involving children or grandchildren of Portuguese people. The new platform brought notable improvements to process monitoring. The previous system was almost entirely manual. The steps were recorded, but they depended on a responsible server to update the information”, says Larissa.
Between 2010 and 2023, more than 400 thousand Brazilians obtained Portuguese citizenship, according to the Ministry of Justice of Portugal. Estimates made by experts, based on records from the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), indicate that around 25 million Brazilians could have Portuguese nationality as they fit the rules defined by the government of Portugal, which extended the benefit to great-grandchildren of Portuguese.
