By RICHARD PAMATATAU
North Shore City Council has scored a regional first for e-government with a revamped website system making available a raft of visual information about property on the net.
Tony Rogers, North Shore City Council chief information officer, said the website and system revamp meant a vast library of property
information, including maps and aerial photographs, was now available online for the first time in the Auckland area.
"We've got everything about properties online now.
"There is something for everyone, from the ratepayer looking for a boundary to real estate agents looking for history or trades people looking for services.
"It saves staff fishing out old paper maps."
People looking to buy property in the area were also using it more because it gave them a better idea about what they were looking at, even before they get to the land agent, he said.
The information includes water supply, wastewater, stormwater, aerial photo, DP plan, zoning and parcel material as well as property details such as rateable value and the amount of rates.
The databases are run on an IMS (internet mapping server) for its databases including rates and an Eview system for its geographic databases.
Rogers said over 300 people at the council used the system.
A lot of the visual information was in complex files, said Rogers, so the system offered viewers a cut-down version to save bandwidth and speed access.
He said it was just a part of the logical extension of e-government services aimed at getting people into helping themselves more.
The council still maintains a bank of 12 PCs at its Takapuna office.
Since the revamped site went live recently Rogers said visitors to the council had slowed.
That was not surprising as it got about 11,000 hits or views a day.
The system was upgraded by Auckland's Eagle Technology which is also amid a huge project to scan 88,000 files of historical property information on the city.
Rogers said any of the files could be from one to 3 boxes of data about a property so the job and database construction had been complex.
There is everything from architectural plans to hand-written notes covering private and commercial property. It even shows where traffic lights, pedestrian crossings and signage is located on the street.
Rogers said the council planned for even more information to be carried on-line.
