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"The present manual processes of storage, searching and photocopying land documents will soon be automated by a new system which can store, retrieve and reproduce the required land records much more efficiently and effectively.
"Our primary objective is to make registered land documents more readily accessible and available.
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"The DIS project is part of our on-going commitment to delivering more efficient land record search services to our customers through the use of modern technology," he said.
At present, land documents in the New Territories Land Registries are stored in paper form and those in the Urban Land Registry in microfilms. Their storage and retrieval require an increasing amount of office accommodation and manpower
resources.
Contractor of the project, Hewlett-Packard Hong Kong Limited, will soon start scanning the paper documents and converting them into computer readable images by means of high-speed scanners. These will be stored, for search and retrieval, on optical disks.
"All land documents received for registration by the Land Registry will be imaged at a Central Imaging Centre. Some 100 million pages of existing land documents in the New Territories Land Registries will be converted into electronic images.
"As for the land documents of the urban area which are already kept in microfilm, we will consider later whether they should also be converted into imaged record," said Mr Pang.
The project will be completed in about six months' time and DIS is expected to start operation in July.
Mr Pang said another advantage of DIS was that the imaged land documents would make cross-district searching possible.
"Customers will not have to travel to different regional offices of the Land Registry to obtain the required information. Moreover, a document can be accessed by several users simultaneously at different locations.