National Records of Scotland (NRS) is a Non-Ministerial Department of the Scottish Government. Our purpose is to collect, preserve and produce information about Scotland's people and history and make it available to inform current and future generations. Our work underpins the fabric of Scottish society: telling the story of our nation. National Records of Scotland performs the registration and statistical functions of the Registrar General for Scotland and the archival functions of the Keeper of the Records of Scotland, including maintaining the archives as one of Scotland’s five National Collections. We administer the registration of life events such as births, deaths, marriages, civil partnerships, divorces and adoptions. We are also responsible for the statutes relating to the formalities of marriage and civil partnership and the conduct of civil marriage. We take the census of Scotland’s population every 10 years and prepare and publish regular demographic statistics. These statistics play a vital part in underpinning decision making from national to local level, and are a building block in the development of a large number of economic and social statistics.