There are a lot of examples here, here's one more; In Turkey, there has been a sort of central family-record keeping thingy for ages. It's centrally held, you

There are a lot of examples here, here's one more; In Turkey, there has been a sort of central family-record keeping thingy for ages. It's centrally held, you don't need to go to your hometown to get one, but you had to go to a government office in your district of residence(you still need to, if you want an official hard-copy) (some records are, like place of residence, are kept locally though(. There was a project to computerize all of the process, mernis, it started in the early 90s and finished sometime around 2007. Since then, for most official businesses, you don't need the official document, just your ID card will do (or for emergencies, just the ID number printed on your ID card). The real odd thing about this system is, for non-usual stuff, you actually need to go to court and sue the government agency for the change. Filing for a divorce? You need to sue NVI for that. Changing your official name? Sue them. Sex change? Not sure about that, but probably yes. Disadvantage to that is having all the state records kept centrally, and knowing how Turkey works, probably under very lax security. In fact, the entire database(at least a copy of it made for the 2009 elections) got leaked earlier this year.