UDI registers applicants for residence permits and maintains statistics on approvals and denials. It has also been involved in efforts to quantify the number of persons irregularly staying in Norway. UDI is thus the administrative office that can provide statistics on stateless persons who apply for visas, residence permits, and asylum. NR registers in the CPR all persons with a legal residence permit in Norway, persons born in Norway, Norwegian citizens born abroad, as well as others who have been granted a Personal Identification Number. Hence, stateless persons with a valid residence permit in Norway who will be staying for more than six months are registered by NR in the CPR; however, it should be noted that such individuals have already been registered in the DUF by UDI when applying for a residence permit or, for example, asylum. The NR also has secondary data on persons who do not have legal domicile but have nonetheless been issued a D-number in Norway.104 The NPIS may also register persons as stateless. For example, asylum applicants who claim to be stateless are registered as such on the basis of the information given by the applicant upon his or her application, submitted to the NPIS. However, the NPIS only publishes statistics on forced returns. The CPR incorporates information from various sources, as different registration systems are connected with the CPR, such as the Alien Register and tax offices. The UDB is used by UDI and NPIS for information and registrations about applications from foreign citizens for visitors’ visas, residence permits, international protection, and citizenship, as well as the handling of expulsion cases, the return of persons without a legal right to be present in Norway, and appeals. The UDB includes stateless persons, who have a special code. The information in the UDB is transferred to the CPR. Notably, the criteria and procedures used by NPIS, UDI, and NR for registering information that a person is stateless do not appear to be fully harmonized, as will be examined in greater depth in Chapter 3.3. Thus, the various authorities registering a person as stateless would be advised to review which definition and criteria they use for determining whether an individual possesses a nationality or is stateless. In particular, procedural standards for making conclusions as to nationality or statelessness ought to be harmonized. In this regard, UNHCR recommends that each authority who may register persons as stateless have working guidelines at their disposal. Such guidelines would include the 1954 Convention’s Article 1 definition of a stateless person and would provide guidance on how to assess whether an individual is stateless. Furthermore, UNHCR would recommend UDI and NR to examine how potential weaknesses in the current practices of the transfer of registrations between these two entities could be improved. This could include looking at ways of improving the procedures for handling transferred registrations, including corrections of prior errors. 104 The D-number is a temporary social security number issued to certain persons. See Chapter 2.2.1 UNHCR STOCKHOLM, OCTOBER 2015 27