Issue Number 20 September/October 2005

On September 30, 2005, a new release ofProperty Online containing many changes andenhancements was put into production. These

changes come from requests and suggestions madeby our users over the past year and from ourcommitment to make the system more user-friendly.

In some cases, the changes were implemented to re-organize, in a more intuitive and logical way, howdata is entered by the submitter. This is particularlytrue in the changes made to adding interests relatingto benefits and burdens. As a result, the process toenter these types of interests has been simplifiedsignificantly.

In addition, several minor improvements were madeto rename existing fields, reformat reports and tomake it easier for our submitters to track their systemnotifications and AFRs. Additional information isviewable in the parcel register.

The following are the AFR and Property Onlinechanges recently implemented:

• Streamlining of entry of benefits, burdens andtheir associated PIDs on the AFR;

• Ability to add names and addresses of NovaScotia Farm Loan occupiers to AFRs andrevision documents. These appear in theparcel register and on Statements ofRegistered and Recorded Interests (SRIs);

• Bundle numbers and parcel relationships areviewable in the parcel register;

• Textual qualifications have been moved to aseparate section of the AFR and the expirydate has been removed;

• The term “Enterprise” has been replaced by“Company/Entity” throughout the system;

• A “User Supplied Reference” field was addedto the AFR, all associated system notices, aswell as the AFR View Notification screen;

• A “View All Related PIDs History” buttonwas added to show all traditional documentscoded against all parcels related to the parcelof interest;

• System generated SRIs have been reformattedto be easier to read;

• The AFR worksheet is now sorted by statuswith IN PROCESS AFRs listed first; and

• If a PDCA is approved pending a correctingdescription, only one notice will be sent to theauthorized user.

An e-mail notice describing more details of thesechanges was sent out to all users. The e-mailprovided the access link to a new online tutorialwhich we have developed to help users understandthe process to be followed when adding benefits andburdens.

Please call our Help Desk at 1-866-518-4540 foradditional information.

To view the tutorial, go to: http://www.gov.ns.ca/snsmr/property/default.asp?mn=282.46.71.77

The E-submission Pilot Project was launched on June13, 2005 for a small group of law firms in the Halifaxarea. The rate of e-submissions picked up in July – oneof the busiest months ever for the Halifax LandRegistration Office (LRO) – and as of October 12,2005 more than 611 documents have beenelectronically submitted. Pilot users have now begunto realize some benefits of the e-submission process.

After using the new system for just one month, a busylegal assistant in one of the pilot law firms noted thateven with the extra step of scanning documents, “Mypreference would be e-submission. There is morecontrol over your work and the ability to complete it.”Law firms can better control their work because:

• Once an e-submitted document is registered, therequired documentation can be sent to thebank/lender and the file closed within days of thesubmission. Paper documents must go throughadditional steps of scanning and quality control atthe LRO before being mailed back to the submitter(a delay of up to two months in Halifax).

• There is no more reliance on couriers to deliverdocuments and wait for a receipt to ensure that thedocument is indexed. As soon as a document ise-submitted, it is indexed. Courier costs aretherefore virtually eliminated with e-submission.

• The gap in sub-searching is eliminated. A real timesub-search can be done seconds before thedocument is e-submitted.

After some refinements to the new e-submissionprocedures (and some adjustments to the paper-freeprocess), Halifax LRO staff members are also seeingthe positive effects of e-submission. Kim MacKayJollimore, Assistant Deputy Registrar, says, “Becausethe lawyer’s e-form is pre-populated with the parcelregister information, there are far fewer rejections,which speeds things up for us.” Other processstreamlining for the LRO due to e-submission include:

• Elimination of duplicate keying from theprescribed form;

• Reduction of paper and funds handling at the frontcounter; and

• Decrease of scanning, quality control anddocument mail-back.

As the volume of e-submissions increases and frontcounter document indexing decreases, staff can focuson reducing delays in the back counter verification

process, as well as back scanning of documents in thevault and other process improvements.

Feedback from the pilot group will now be used toenhance the e-submission system prior to provincialroll-out in spring 2006. Initially, e-submission will notbe mandatory, however, once more users are familiarwith the e-submission process and more forms areavailable for electronic submission, the process willbecome mandatory.

You are Cordially Invited ... toParticipate in our E-Submission Pilot

Coming to an Office Near You – 60 Years of Documents!As part of the Registry 2000 vision to provideelectronic access to land registration information, wehave launched a project to scan 60 years of legacypapers province-wide and make them availablethrough Property Online. Mike Jacklyn of the HalifaxLand Registration Office is leading this initiative,selecting and working with a team of more than 10casual workers who will be employed in scanningteams across the province.

Over the past several months, we have developed andtested new scanning software that allows bulkscanning of registry vault books and creates the linkbetween the scanned images and Property Online’sRegistration Search Index (the online version of theGGI). In early August, the first of these scanned images(Halifax Registry Vault Books 6236 to 6255) waslaunched into production. These scanned images lookidentical to the scanned images created today for newdocuments and will be accessible in the same manner.

The first five casuals are now set up and hard at workin Halifax LRO boardroom. They are able to scanapproximately 12 to15 books per day and load theminto Property Online. The team has started by scanningthe documents recorded between 1997 and the start ofdaily scanning in March 2005. Once these books areonline, the team will start scanning backwards from1983 to 1945. This covers almost all of the bookscurrently located in the registry vault.

The Registry 2000 team is also working to convert the15 years of scanned documents registered between late1983 and 1997 in Halifax that are now only accessiblein person at the LRO via the Optex system and makethem available through Property Online. When thisphase is completed later this year, Halifax documentsfrom late 1983 to present will be available throughProperty Online in the same manner that scannedimages are accessed online today.

Once the Halifax scanning initiative has developed asmooth process and worked out all of the necessaryroutines for ensuring the work progresses smoothly,Mike will be setting up scanning teams in other LROs. Software enhancements have been implemented tosimplify the legacy scanning process for staff insmaller LROs. This allows them to call up the GGIindex for an entire book, making it easier to scan entiredocument books using their regular scanningequipment. This means that in addition to the casualscanning team performing high volume scanning, localLRO staff have started to scan legacy documents andload them into Property Online. The work willcontinue through the fall and winter, as time permits.

The Registry 2000 team is also investigating whatwould be involved in scanning all of the plans that areon file in the registries and also in determining whetherit would be possible to accept plans electronically. Lookfor further updates in the next issue of this newsletter.

The Nova Scotia Civic Address File A New Addition to Property Online

The Nova Scotia Civic Address File (NSCAF) is oneof the five primary geographic databases that ServiceNova Scotia and Municipal Relations (SNSMR) isresponsible for building, maintaining anddisseminating on behalf of Nova Scotians. TheNSCAF consists of a common map representation ofall roads (road network) and associated building(civic) location information for the province.

Participation and assistance in building the NSCAFhas been widespread, involving partnerships acrossthree levels of government. These partnerships,particularly with municipalities who play a keymaintenance role, will be critical to the successfulmaintenance and improvement of civic addressinformation over time. They are responsible to reviewexisting community boundaries, supply existing civic

addressing data, and develop a NSCAF maintenanceprocess. SNSMR is responsible for overall managementand technical organization. Emergency MeasuresOrganization (EMO) and Transportation and PublicWorks (TPW) are also key stakeholders, along with thefederal government, native bands and other departments.

The development of the NSCAF began in earnest infiscal 2000-2001. Much preparatory work had beendone previous to that time, including the developmentof a concept and subsequent pilot project between1997 and 1999 to prove the concept. The initialbuilding of the NSCAF was completed in the fall of2004. The Department’s current focus is to establishmaintenance processes with all municipal partners andto improve the quality and integrity of the NSCAFdata over time. Continued

One of the major utilizations of the completed NSCAFis to support emergency service delivery throughoutthe province. The file is being used to support 911call-taker facilities as well as fire, ambulance andpolice services and facilities. Other uses for theNSCAF include the improvement of civic addressinformation in various department applications, suchas Property Online. Until recently, Property Online didnot get its parcel civic addresses from the NSCAFdatabase. This changed on October 2, 2005 when theHRM civic address data was loaded into PropertyOnline.

Other municipal units that will be loaded this fallinclude Cape Breton Regional Municipality,Guysborough County, Inverness County, RichmondCounty, and Victoria County. This is the first step inthe important process of synchronizing parceladdresses in Property Online with those in the NSCAFdatabase.

In 2006/2007, all participating municipalities willupdate civic address data into Property Online throughan automated interface between Property Online andNSCAF. All civic address data for participatingmunicipalities will be automatically loaded intoProperty Online on a regularly scheduled basis. Also,changes will be made to the Property Onlineapplication to clearly indicate when a parcel’s addresshas been assigned by the municipality.

Many municipal units are actively re-naming existingstreets to give uniqueness to street names. The mainreason is to avoid ambiguity and confusion whenEmergency Services are responding to a 911 call. POLusers should note that the former street names will notbe searchable in Property Online after the aboveupdating process begins.

Stay tuned for future updates as we proceed with ourphased implementation: visit the project web site athttp://www.gov.ns.ca/snsmr/land/projects/civic/.

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Throughout the implementation of the new landregistration system across Nova Scotia, the Registry2000 web site has served as a town crier, describingthe objectives of the project, announcing variousstages as they developed and apprising thestakeholders of its progress as each goal was realized.

This year marks a turning point for the landregistration system, as it transforms from a project toan operational reality. In the past, information hasbeen available on four primary sites:

• Property Registration contains informationabout the Registry of Deeds system, thePersonal Property Registry and a link to theGeographic Information site (where you canfind details about aerial photos, map productsand other geographic information);

• Registry 2000 has been the primary source ofinformation about the project;

• Land Registration was established after thenew system was first rolled out in ColchesterCounty and provides information on training,procedures, Registrar General directives,forms, and other vital information for users; and

• Property Online provides a gateway toProperty Online, information for new users onhow to subscribe, and details on the benefitsand features of the new system.

These four sites were interlinked so that users couldjump from one site to another as needed. As thesystem rolled out across the province, the amount ofinformation on the sites grew by leaps and bounds;users sometimes needed to bounce from site to site tofind just the right bit of information.

With the completion of the final rollout on March 1,2005, some of those web pages no longer have animportant role to play. Others have become a dailyresource for users. A review by project team membersof hits made on all parts of our website and feedbackon what information users find most useful determinedwhich web pages are least effective and which areessential and need to be enhanced.

Over the summer, project team members re-designedthe sites to make them relevant for users today. Someweb pages have already been updated, but the majorre-vamp will happen this fall, with the end result beinga simplified, streamlined web source of landregistration system information. When that happens,users may find that some of their favourite pages havebeen moved and will have to be re-bookmarked.

The changes to our website will ensure that itcontinues to be a valuable resource for users of theland registration system. Rest assured that the mostutilized pages will remain in place. If you cannot findinformation where it once was posted, or you have awell-used link that seems to have disappeared, pleasecall the Property Online Help Line at 1-866-518-4640.

Business Continuity Planning: All Systems Are Go!

“Property Online is not currently available. We areworking to correct the problem.” This is a message nouser wants to receive and no SNSMR staff memberlikes to send. Unfortunately, as the government andusers rely more and more on the proper and continuousfunctioning of our complex technology systems tocomplete business transactions, these messagesbecome a part of our life. With this increaseddependence on technology, the focus of businesscontinuity is shifting away from manual processestoward a greater investment in system continuity,efficient recovery, and communication plans.

It takes many experts to keep complex systems like theland registration system and Property Online up andrunning and to ensure optimum performance, dataintegrity and security at all times. InformationManagement Services (IMS), Corporate InformationTechnology Operations (CITO) and the landregistration technology team work closely together toreduce the risk of a land registration system outage andto recover quickly when an outage does occur.

Safe Storage

The land registration support system is robust and theprobability of failure within an individual hardwarecomponent is very low. The servers used for thedatabase and application services each have fourprocessors and if an individual processor fails, theother three will continue to operate. As well, eachserver has dual power supplies, allowing the server tofunction normally if an individual power unit fails.The web services are provided by two machines,eliminating a single point of failure at that level of theapplication. Similarly, the Property Online applicationruns on two servers in parallel, again eliminating asingle failure point. All land registration servers arehoused in the Provincial Data Centre. Designed toensure the continued operation of servers supportingbusiness critical applications, this facility contains abackup generator, fire detection and suppressionsystems, and physical security to limit building access.

Protecting the Data

In the case of a significant failure, the greatestrecovery focus is on ensuring data is not lost. Data iscontinuously duplicated through backup and recoveryprocesses which were tested as part of preparation forimplementing the new technology. In addition to this,data is written to two locations on mirrored data disks.

If a data disk cannot be read, the system will accessinformation from the second location, with no impacton service. If a critical server failure occurs, and areplacement is required, a server can be taken from thetest environment and be ready in production in oneday. A system actively monitors all land registrationservers and pages technical team members whenservers are not performing as expected. This allowsearly diagnosis of any event that may require attentionand, when dealt with promptly, resolves the eventprior to its impacting users.

Lessons Learned

Since the start of land registration operations in March2003, three events have occurred that stopped landregistration users from accessing the applications forall, or a signification portion, of a day. From theseevents, lessons were learned and changes made inbackup and recovery, internal escalation processes andserver maintenance that reduces the chance of a systemoutage and lessens recovery times when an outageoccurs. Other options for reducing the risk of a systemoutage and decreasing recovery times are beinginvestigated. One option is a second set of serverslocated at a separate site that can be used if the serversat the data centre fail. Decisions on system continuityimprovements are dependent on the cost benefit of thechange.

Business Continuity

As part of the transition from project to operations, thesystem continuity and recovery processes currently inplace for the land registration system are beingreviewed to determine if changes or additions arerequired. Using the knowledge of actual work flowsand volumes, and considering the features available innew technology, SNSMR is looking at whether currentplans should be adjusted to reduce risks of a systemoutage. Plans will also be included for events that arenot systems related, such as localized power outages,building malfunctions, and natural disasters.

Part of this business continuity and recovery reviewwill include plans for events that are not systemsrelated. Each office’s plan for site specific issues (alocalized power outage or building malfunctions) andprovince-wide plans for natural disasters are to becompiled as well and will be included in the overallBusiness Continuance Plan.

Continued

Communication is Key

One of the most crucial parts of any system outage ordisaster recovery plan is the communications plan fornotifying key people – staff, clients, and those whowill be involved in the recovery – of system problemsand expected down time. Once the diagnosis has beenmade, the cause of the problem and any abilities toreduce the risk of future interruptions iscommunicated. To date, our communications plansand processes have worked very well and continue tobe our primary focus when the system fails.

Are Manual Processes Practical?

When the new technology used to support the newland registration system was implemented, it wasrecognized that maintaining manual contingencyprocesses would require a large effort. Budget andresources are better used to continually improve thetechnology infrastructure, thus reducing the risks of asystem outage and decreasing recovery times, than tokeep manual processes in place in an attempt tocontinue business when a system outage occurs.

Electronic processes such as Traditional DocumentSearching, Viewing of Scanned Images, SubmittingPDCAs and AFRs, Searching for Land RegistrationDocuments in Process, and Reviewing the ParcelRegister would require a huge effort to replace thesystems with manual or paper processes. Paperprocesses would also leave lawyers and other usersexposed to liabilities because proper searching wouldbe incomplete or not possible.

Thankfully, we have not experienced a prolongedsystem outage and our efforts will continue to beplaced on reducing the risks of system failure.However, in the event of a prolonged system outage,many decisions need to be made such as:

• Is it more practical to close the LRO?

• What standards for practising lawyers need to be inplace?

• How do we prepare for “catch up” when thesystem is back up?

Ongoing discussions will be held with the NSBS andother stakeholders to finalize the business continuanceplans for the land registration system over the next fewmonths.

Reducing the PDCA QueueLand Registration Office staff province-wide havedone a tremendous job this summer of meeting thethree-day PDCA and 24-hour AFR turnaround times.

In Halifax, staff (with the assistance of mappers fromother regions) kept on top of a PDCA queue thatexceeded 600 applications per day several times thissummer. Registrar General Mark Coffin plus JanMcNenly and Kevin Blades (head office staffresponsible for policy and procedures) were alsopressed into service to process correcting PDCAs inHalifax.

This opportunity showed them that most correctingdescriptions were able to be processed without delaysor hitches. Submitters generally corrected the issuesthat were raised by the mappers on initial applicationand noted the corrections in the comments field of thePDCA. Even so, a portion of the correctingdescriptions had to be rejected for a variety of reasons:

• Re-submission of the original description withoutany corrections;

• Submission of the corrected description withoutnoting what was changed;

• Making a new error while correcting the initialerror;

• Repeating a derivative of the initial error by mis-typing the correction.

Errors on correcting PDCAs are frustrating for thesubmitters and SNSMR staff alike. They also serve tomake the PDCA queue longer than necessary. AllPDCA submitters should carefully review theircorrecting descriptions to ensure no new errors havebeen made. This allows the PDCAs to be processedquickly and the turnaround time to be minimized.

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