The Central Office of Civil Registration (the CPR-Office) is located under the Ministry of the Interior and Social Affairs. The office is in charge of the Danish Civil Registration System and functions as the main supplier of basic personal information to public authorities and the private sector.

Since 1924 names, addresses, marital status, birth registration place and other basic information has been systematically registered for every person with residence (present as well as past) in Denmark or Greenland. In the beginning the registration was based on manually compiled municipal registers.

The use of the information in these registers gradually increased, serving as well local administrative bodies and central government bodies as private civilians inquiring about current addresses.

By the early 1960ties the use of the municipal registers had reached a level where the increasing demand for data could no longer be served within the existing framework. At the same time the demand for a general identification of individuals for public as well as private use grew.

The centralised Civil Registration System (CRS) was created in 1968 by copying the contents of the manually kept municipal registers, thus creating one register covering the whole nation. At the same time every person with residence in Denmark was identified by a unique identification number which also served as identifier in the CRS.

An ‘Office for Civil Registration’ was created February 1^st 1965 with the creation of the CRS as its main task.

Today the Central Office of Civil Registration is a part of the Ministry of Social Welfare and is in charge of the CRS. It also functions as the main supplier of basic personal information to public authorities and the private sector.

More information on the history and the development of the CRS can be found in the submenu Documents.