NLA says all Titles to be Online come January

Come January, all existing land titles will be available at the National Land Agency (NLA)’s eLandjamaica website, and according to the agency’s Director of Business Development and Technology, Sherlock Glenister, all systems are in place to facilitate the process.
Divulging details of the website’s improved changes in a recent interview with JIS News, Mr. Glenister says that a company has been contracted by the NLA to scan all available land titles, which were previously only accessible in bounded volume book-form. “By the end of this calendar year, we should have all titles available online…we are pretty much current… if an endorsement or amendment is made today, it will be available tomorrow.we give a 24-hour turnaround time to make it available. So we are pretty confident that come January, we will have all title documents available online,” he says. The website, which is accessible by logging on to www.eLandjamaica.com, provides select land information, mainly on title documents, land valuation data, and some aspect of survey data, such as control points and maps.
A key purpose of the website is to centralise the varying functions that were served independently by four government agencies – the Estates Management; Survey and Mapping; Titles; and Land Valuation Divisions, before they were merged to form the NLA.
Initially launched in 2003, Mr. Glenister explains that eLandjamaica is being implemented in two phases, with the second phase, now underway.
The first aspect of the project, funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) at some US$210,000, was to provide the NLA with a solid, modern, national land information system. This involved loading some 400,000 titles onto the system and also featured limited mapping abilities.
Before this process, he says, persons who wanted information on any particular property, would have had to go to three or four different departments to get that information, but “by having this one-stop shop .by just clicking on and accessing the website, you can have all that information on that same property in just a few clicks.”
Under phase two of the project, the agency will be implementing a number of changes recommended by a focus group, which was engaged to voice their views on the website and its features.
“What we have done is to integrate all the data from the three or four different core divisions to have it in one database where that person clicking on any parcel will get the title information, the valuation roll information and if they should need a map of that area, they could also find it in just one window,”Mr. Glenister tells JIS.
He says that the agency will also be broadening access to a larger client base, including credit cards holders. During the initial phase, he informs, only persons, who held subscription accounts with NLA, could source data from the site. They would open a subscription account at the NLA’s offices by making an initial payment of $500 and would then be required to make successive payments to access the website’s contents. The NLA originally stipulated that payments to search the site had to be made beforehand.
With the revision of the website, Mr. Glenister says: “we will continue to have the subscription-based service, in addition to online payment. so you can top up and create subscription amounts online via credit card. users have the option to pay for products and services either by their subscriber account or by credit card.”
Also under phase two, the user friendliness of the site is expected to be significantly enhanced, with customers expected to benefit from easier navigation and search capabilities. “We have better facility to search for products and services, intuitive design of the website, which will provide better navigation and inclusion of tool tips,” he informs.
Since the first phase, the mapping of the entire island has been digitised in a vector format, and as such, Mr. Glenister says extensive mapping of land parcels and road networks are available for sale. He explains that a dataset, referred to as ‘street centre line’ will “be used as a backdrop for our interactive map services”.
“This is a service we believe the users will find very useful and informative based on the dataset that we will be making available. It will revolutionize the way we search for property information,” the Director points out.
He notes however that this particular service will not be accessible to standard subscribers, but is meant to be offered to be utilised by government agencies and some corporate clients.
Over the three years since its introduction, customers subscribing to eLandJamaica has grown steadily, the NLA Director says, noting that at last count, in excess of 400 customers were registered as having utilised the service.
Customers, Mr. Glenister informs, spans the gamut from lawyers and appraisers to valuators and mortgage companies be required to do land title searches.
The NLA currently generates an average minimum of $800,000 a month in revenue from users of the website, and it is from its own funds, that financing for the second phase of the website upgrade will be derived.
This time around, the upgrade will cost the agency some US$160,000, and the sum has already been approved by the National Contract Commission (NCC).
With only three months to go before the debut of an improved eLandJamaica product, Mr. Glenister pauses to reflect on the developments that the website has stirred in the general operations of the NLA.
“eLandjamaica, as it is, has helped us tremendously internally and it has pushed us and forced us to be current, to be prudent and proactive in the data and services available. It has opened us to the world and what we find is that because of eLandjamaica, we have changed a lot of our business process to facilitate the customers and to emphasise the need for good customer service,” he proudly states.
Expounding on the positive spin-offs that eLandjamaica has wrought, Mr. Glenister adds that “it has been a positive thing to the agency and is a product that we will continue to improve in order to meet our customer needs.”