Bringing Waitakere’s property records into the 21st Century

Digitalising the old paper records of every property in Waitakere is a truly colossal job and the city council has now scanned nearly two million pages of documents – or the records of 20,000 homes.

The digitalisation process will make the city’s property reports easier for the public to access and will also make the process of acquiring or reading them much faster.

Councillor Ross Clow, chairman of the Finance and Operational Performance Committee, says the digitalisation process means the council will be able to quickly refer to, or produce on request, property records, rather than having to manually look up files and read them on microfiche as is the current practice.

“The council’s information team is processing about 100 properties a day and in the past eight months has scanned close to two million pages,” Cr Clow says.

“Digitalising our records means the council can make the information available to the public through a number of channels.”

Cr Clow says that while the information management team has scanned a huge number of documents it still has millions to go.

“The information team believes it will take another three years to complete the job – or to put it another way, if it laid them out, there would still be three kilometres of property records to scan,” he says.

The council is investigating user-pays kiosks being installed at Waitakere Central and it is possible that once completed, the public will be able to pay to access property records online.

ENDS

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