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"The present system of storing, searching and reproducing land documents manually will be automated with the introduction of the new system," Mr Pang said.
"By scanning paper documents and putting their images on optical disks, the DIS can store, retrieve, reproduce and distribute the required land records much more efficiently and effectively."
He said DIS would also streamline the Registry's land document management processes, resulting in savings in storage space and manpower resources.
DIS will be operated at the Land Registry's Central Imaging Centre at Grand Central Plaza, Sha Tin. The Centre is equipped with optical disk jukeboxes, servers, scanners, printers and computer terminals. The new system is designed to manage 300 million pages of land documents eventually.
Mr Pang said the conversion of some 240 million pages of the existing land documents into electronic images would be done in phases.
"The conversion exercise for documents maintained in the New Territories Land Registries will take 18 months to complete. The conversion of microfilmed documents kept in the Urban Land Registry into imaged records will be carried out at a later stage.
"The whole exercise will be completed by the end of 1998," he said.
Another advantage of DIS was that delivery of the imaged documents to users via facsimile transmission would soon be possible, said Mr Pang.
"By September, subscribers to the Land Registry's on-line search facility, the Direct Access Services, will be able to receive facsimile copies of imaged documents automatically at their own offices without calling at the Land Registry," he said.
Mr Pang also pointed out that with the introduction of DIS, the Land Registry was moving a step closer to providing a one-stop land search facility to its customers.
"A Central Search Office will soon be set up on the 19th floor of the Queensway Government Offices to centralise all land search services which are currently provided on two different floors.