Registers of Scotland, the UK government agency responsible for land registration in Scotland, has completed the first phase of a ú3m programme to computerise the country’s land registration system. The programme has been split into two three-year contracts, worth ú1m and ú2m respectively. The first phase, the one that has just been completed, involved the supply, implementation and support of a text-based system for land registry records. The second involves the supply, implementation and support of a customised geographic mapping system for drawing ground plans. Siemens Nixdorf Information Systems Ltd won the former and Syntegra, the systems integration division of British Telecommunications Plc won the latter. Land registry records have been input into a customised version of Microsoft Word, which has integrated Informix Hyperscript links to transfer data automatically through to the central repository. End users will access this information via 300 80486-based personal computers supplied by Siemens Nixdorf. The company has also supplied three Silicon Graphics Inc servers, each with 6Gb storage capacity. Syntegra supplied Sun Microsystems Inc workstations on which the graphical software for the mapping systems runs; the software comes from Horsham, West Sus sex-based Tenet Systems Ltd. The digital mapping system is being used to draw, store and print boundaries as an overlay on existing digital Ordnance Survey maps, the de facto maps for the UK. It will replace an archive of hand-drawn plans. Fife has been the first county in Scotland to use both systems for computerised land registry records in a nationwide project that is due for completion by 2003.
