Manukau City Council was one of the first councils in the country to take up TA e-certification, certifying their first cadastral survey plan in 2004.
With a population of more than 330,000, Manukau City is the third largest and one of fastest growing cities in New Zealand. On average, Manukau City receives 40 survey plans a month. All plans received via e-survey are certified online, which amounts to approximately 60% of total plans received.
The decision to take up e-certification was initiated by the Team Leader of the Resource Compliance section who saw the inevitability of electronic survey plans and decided to 'get in early'.
Setting up in Landonline took Manukau City about a month and was relatively straightforward. They downloaded their Digital Certificates directly to their C Drives on PCs thus avoiding having to load them onto the network.
When Manukau City changed to a citrix server system with locked off C Drives, however, adjustments were required to accommodate the Digital Certificate software. The software was taken off the PCs and transferred to the network. As a result, Landonline users can only access their Digital Certificates from their own PCs. The council found that the system ran much better for them in an XP environment.
E-certification didn't cause Manukau City to change their certifying delegations. The main change – and benefit – in their process was to reduce the administration steps required with paper plans. Manukau City has found that e-certification speeds up cadastral survey plan processing, especially as applications do not need to go through the post and administration systems.
Once plans are certified, Manukau City keeps them in paper form until the 224 certificate is issued. After that, they are scanned into the council's system called Alchemy.
Manukau City Council's process for RMA survey plan approval - (pdf 407KB). This document has been supplied courtesy of Manukau City Council and is subject to copyright.
Manukau City Council's process flow chart for supporting documents - (pdf 116KB). This document has been supplied courtesy of Manukau City Council and is subject to copyright.