LINZ Landonline: A successful digital government case study

Toitū Te Whenua Land Information New Zealand (LINZ), is a government department under the direction of an elected minister of the Crown of New Zealand. LINZ is responsible for New Zealand’s land and survey information and stewardship of the systems that record, protect and provide public access to that information, and record changes in ownership. Landonline is the name of LINZ’s digital/online property transfer service used by surveyors and lawyers on behalf of businesses and individuals to record property transactions. LINZ has commenced a five-year programme of work, to rebuild and modernise Landonline. The programme’s aim is to migrate Landonline to next generation technology to improve the experience, availability, and reliability of Landonline for customers. The aim includes providing LINZ with the ability to more easily make changes to meet evolving customer needs. To that end, LINZ has decided to focus also on also building an enduring (in-house) capability, able to employ modern approaches such as agile and devops to software development, that will exist as long as Landonline is needed. The focus of this case study is the first phase of the programme, which included detailed planning, building capability, proof of concepts and resources to begin the rebuild of the technology platform; and developed and began piloting new search and notice services. The new platform has begun to emerge with the new search and notices capabilities which is integrated with and works alongside the original Landonline system and will continue to do so until all phases of the rebuild are completed.