Dear readers,
It’s an honour to write the foreword for this final edition of Map it Out for 2021 from where l am, on the land of the Wurundjeri people.
For the last 7 years, I have been privileged to lead the Land Use Victoria (LUV) ePlan Program that’s one of the central pieces of digital transformation happening in our land management systems today.
The ePlan program is significant for land administration data, services, and workflows for all industry groups that rely on cadastral plan and surveying data.
Since March 2020, we’ve been re-engineering the program and how it works with our online system SPEAR.
We’ve streamlined the ePlan creation process for land subdivisions by converting data from the surveyors’ CAD drawing based on the co-designed Single CAD Format File (SCFF), reusing cadastral data, improving the presentation of data validations and the visualisation of plans. This has made ePlans more intuitive and accessible to all Victorian surveying firms.
Highlights of the ePlan program included:
- Launch of the ePlan Portal, integrating all new and existing ePlan services into a single location in SPEAR
- Design and development of new services - ePlan Creation, Single CAD Format File (SCFF) Validation and SCFF Viewer.
- A new ePlan dashboard that makes it easier for surveying firms to access and manage their ePlans.
- Improved functionality of the Visualisation Enhancement Tool (VET) for complex plan preparation.
Embedding the ePlan Portal in SPEAR makes it a ‘one of a kind’ data-driven digital cadastral system that facilitates end-to-end processes. SPEAR also houses an Electronic Lodgment Network (ELN) that means lawyers and conveyancers can electronically lodge ePlans in SPEAR for registration.
Surveyors can jump into SPEAR and discover the new ePlan Portal. To be able to create ePlans, surveyors will need to adopt the Single CAD Format File (SCFF). Training and ongoing support is available to all surveying firms adopting ePlan. Contact the SPEAR service desk for more information.
The pilot will continue to the end of 2022. We are taking feedback and engaging with surveying firms during this time so we can build a better system together with our users.
This is a continuation of the close industry engagement throughout the program, as well as a short test pilot we ran in July this year that has helped shape new and recent advancements.
The implementation of the ePlan Portal in SPEAR is part of the new Digital Twin Victoria program’s ‘Faster Subdivision Registration’ workstream, which aims to realise benefits for the property industry and government by streamlining services.
It’s also the connecting piece with the Digital Cadastre Modernisation (DCM) project enabling Victoria’s property boundary spatial data to be born-digital, breaking the current cycle of digitisation from pdf.
The ePlan Portal is designed and developed through our partnership with the ePlan team from the Centre for Spatial Data Infrastructures and Land Administration (CSDILA) at the University of Melbourne, working with the Land Use Victoria SPEAR team.
I am immensely proud of the work by the team. The nature of the work is incredibly complex, and we’re extremely excited about the future for the ePlan Program and the potential to transform our land management systems.
Mark Briffa
Manager, Electronic Subdivisions Unit
Land Use Victoria | DELWP