Independent report – ‘The Grosvenor review’
Part of testing our new approach is to understand why we haven’t been able to move more quickly to digital survey plans before. Take-up of the previous form of digital plans in NSW has been stubbornly low—at around 5 per cent—for years.
To this end, in 2019, the Office of the Registrar General and the Surveyor General commissioned an independent ‘Digital Survey Plans Review’ by Grosvenor. The three main objectives of the review were to:
- explore and explain why uptake of digital plans has remained low
- identify what opportunities exist for digitalisation of plans
- provide recommendations on the best way to progress digital plans such that benefits to surveyors, Government and other plan users are maximised.
Grosvenor spent several months consulting with surveyors, councils, utilities, developers, software vendors, Spatial Services, Transport for NSW, and the Department of Planning, Industry and Environment. Grosvenor also considered approaches in other jurisdictions, and reviewed the eConveyancing reform to identify applicable lessons for digital survey plans in NSW.
As a result, Grosvenor identified a number of ‘pain points’ that hampered our move to digital plans in the past, and how our approach now must deal with these directly.
Grosvenor has now delivered its final report. They’ve made suggestions on how we can reframe our approach to work with industry on a successful transition to paperless digital survey plans. In particular, Grosvenor concluded the current approach:
- does not provide sufficient incentives for industry to justify the additional effort of preparing LandXML files
- failed to deliver the purported benefits for industry, such as the automatic rendering of plan images
- is perceived as part of a move away from the current monument-based approach and favours ‘data’ over ‘decisions’.
Grosvenor recommended a four-step high-level roadmap to progress digitalisation:
- Confirm outcomes with stakeholders to guide design of digital plans—with a focus on efficiency, accuracy and customer service
- Agree on governance with clear roles, responsibilities and accountabilities for Government, NSW LRS and industry for design and implementation
- Design solutions for three main areas: deposited plans, strata plans and approvals and associated documents—engaging with surveyors and other industry stakeholders throughout the solution design phase
- Implement solutions in close consideration of impacts on stakeholder groups, with continued stakeholder engagement; and in the case of mandating, an appropriate notice period should be given with the timing designed with, and agreed upon, by industry representatives.