Whakatāne District Council has initiated a project which will see the Council’s 20,000-plus hard copy property and subdivision files converted into a digital format.

This week, Council commenced a tender process to identify a suitable vendor to carry out the scanning and formatting of its property file collection. The potential vendors will be invited to put forward their proposals, which will be reviewed by staff, and a contract awarded in September on a trial proviso.

General Manager Planning, Regulatory and Corporate Services, David Bewley, says the project is likely to take several years to complete and is simply a requirement of living in a digital age. “A single physical copy not only limits the number of people who have access to the information at any one time, but also prevents efficiency gains that modern digital office processes can provide.”

Mr Bewley says considerable planning has gone into the digitisation project, particularly in terms of scope.

“Council staff have identified what is required to ensure that the digitisation process can be undertaken without interrupting our day-to-day business and without compromising the quality of the information held,” Mr Bewley says. “We have also learned a great deal from other councils which have already carried out this process, and we’re applying their experiences to ensure that our process runs as smoothly as possible.

“We anticipate that the scanning phase of the project will take at least two years, depending on the capabilities of the selected vendor, and is not likely to begin until the end of 2016.”