Chief Executive's Overview

Kia ora koutou

New Zealanders expect public service departments to deliver services that support them in their daily lives, while ensuring there are robust laws and standards that provide confidence and stability.

For Land Information New Zealand, this translates to ensuring New Zealand has a property rights system with optimally balanced regulation and efficient delivery of services, protecting New Zealanders' security and fuelling economic growth.

Central to this approach over the past few years has been the move to 100% electronic lodgement of survey and titles transactions. This has seen a shift from a completely paper-based system to an online system called Landonline, which enables remote lodgement by conveyancers and surveyors and, in some cases, instantaneous updating of the Landonline database.

February 2009 will see that goal achieved, with conveyancers joining surveyors in lodging all their transactions electronically. In this past year LINZ, and the surveying and conveyancing professions, have met some major milestones towards that goal: full e-lodgement for survey transactions, 70% e-lodgement for title transactions, and significant functionality enhancements that have enabled users to electronically lodge complex dealings.

2007/08 saw the delivery of a substantial part of our three-year plan to ensure our regulatory interventions are optimal – as little as possible, as much as necessary, given the level of risk. At the beginning of this multi-year review, LINZ administered standards, guidelines, regulations, and frameworks recorded in more than 290 documents. When the rationalisation process is completed in 2008/09, we anticipate a total of approximately 35 documents, providing a more accessible and coherent regulatory approach.

LINZ's focus on these two aspects was recognised during the year with the World Bank ranking New Zealand first out of 178 economies for ease in registering and transacting property in their 2008 report on business regulations¹. This is an achievement we are particularly proud of.

LINZ also manages eight percent of New Zealand's land area. In 2007/08, our policy advice on, and administration of, the two million hectares of South Island high country from Marlborough to Southland that is leased or licensed saw some significant achievements. These included addressing the financial return the Crown gets on leased or licensed land, working with the Department of Conservation to identify information that will make it easier for the public to access the high country, providing greater protection to iconic landscapes, lakesides and lowland diversity, and putting in place a more proactive model for engaging with leaseholders and high country stakeholders.

Ten substantive Tenure Review proposals were negotiated with pastoral leaseholders in 2007/08. This has designated 53,516 hectares (72%) of pastoral lease land to be returned to full Crown ownership for conservation management, and 20,871 hectares (28%) to be freeholded to former leaseholders.

In 2007/08, LINZ made substantial progress towards delivering our two key topographic and hydrographic information projects: development of a new national 1:50,000 topographic map series and the implementation of a new hydrographic data infrastructure.

The new paper map series will be launched in September 2009, and LINZ will coincide this launch of the paper maps with the provision of corresponding electronic versions directly into the databases of New Zealand's emergency services and via our website.

The new hydrographic data infrastructure will ensure LINZ continues to meet our responsibilities for providing official hydrographic information and the increasing expectations of our customers. In 2007/08, our progress included the implementation of a new database to store and process the huge volume of survey data being produced by new technologies. The database will enable more efficient delivery of our products and services and the generation of new products such as Electronic Navigational Charts (ENCs²).

Looking to LINZ the organisation, 2007/08 has seen us continue to manage the fundamental change of re-shaping ourselves to deliver in an electronic environment. As the new Chief Executive of LINZ, I was pleased to find on my arrival in July 2008 that the organisation was both in good shape to do this, and already looking to the future beyond 100% e-lodgement.

In 2007, LINZ began assessing how much more we can contribute to New Zealand through the breadth and depth of our information and land management expertise. We revised our purpose statement, reflecting that we have a role to play in encouraging New Zealand's land information markets to develop and mature, recognising the increasing importance of geospatial information³. While we will always focus on the core business described in this report, I look forward to reporting next year on further progress in that work.

COLIN MACDONALD
Chief Executive
Land Information New Zealand