Land record access gets electronic

The Canadian Government's Department of Indian and Northern Affairs (Ottawa) is bringing in a Westbrook Technologies Fortis system and Oracle database backend to manage its land records more efficiently.

Using the tools, the department expects to improve access speed and sharing of information across its offices throughout Canada.

The move to the integrated document management system is the latest round of a four year process of transferring microfilm records to electronic files for registered land documents, land survey plans, land grants, land sales account books and trust money accounts.

"Moving to computer based technology simplified greatly the distribution of the information across our regional offices," said to Jacques DesRochers, Lands Directorate. "This also allowed us to split the information by tribes and provide them with their own copies, which could not be done before in an efficient manner."

The department is bringing in 79 seats of Fortis (75 for viewing, 2 scanning and 2 for editing)