The Land Services Group (LSG), part of South Australia's Department for Administrative and Information Services, has used electronic image libraries to scan and store land title diagrams and documents since the early 1990s.
By 2000, the image libraries held two million land documents, comprising seven million images and 800,000 title diagrams. But with 1500 requests for land title searches each day, the systems were stretched, sometimes unavailable, and had limited external technical support. To improve its level of service, LSG needed to replace the two image libraries with a reliable and robust alternative without interrupting the daily operations of South Australia's land titling system.
We replaced the two legacy systems with PC-based, Windows-driven image libraries that were compatible with LSG's existing corporate IT platform. LSG also outsourced the hosting and administration of the new image libraries to us.
We successfully converted LSG's 2.8 million land documents and title diagrams to the new system. It was crucial that no images were lost, as this would have had serious consequences for the South Australian Government as the guarantor of the State's land titles.
To increase the speed of land title compilation and distribution, we also developed special software that merges land title text from South Australia's Torrens Automated Titling System (TATS), with its relevant title diagram. Each day, we fax 1000 Register Searches to customers within 2-3 minutes of receiving their search request, compared with a turnaround of up to 2-3 hours under the legacy system.
Previously, staff access to the image libraries was limited to a few proprietary terminals, which hindered LSG's responsiveness to customer inquiries. Today, staff have access from every workstation via an Internet browser, and the system has the capacity to make 200,000 retrievals a month - ten times the current demand.
To save LSG time and to improve work turnaround, we also introduced workflow process software. This provides LSG staff with all the on-screen tools they need to scan, create, retrieve or edit a title diagram and replaces the previous system of printing, manually annotating and rescanning title diagrams.
"Outsourcing the electronic image libraries to HPA (now Salmat) has freed us from the capital costs and risks associated with introducing a new in-house system and at the same time, has enabled us to introduce new internal processes.
"The new system has increased staff access to land information and dramatically improved our response time to search requests, increasing customer satisfaction. We are now also a step closer to our goal of delivering a full electronic land administration service."
Steve Wilden, Manager, Titles, Land Services Group, Department for Administrative and Information Services
