Rotorua District Council Property File Digitisation Project

Rotorua City Council's paper collection of property records took up so much space the departmet faced moving out of the council's main offices.

With no backup, the collection, including historic records dating back to the city's earliest days, was vulnerable to flood, fire and theft.

Accessing records was complicated. Only one person could use a file at any one time and obtaining files on Rotorua properties from elsewhere in the country was a time-consuming process.

The solution for RCC was to relocate the 44,000-file collection to Desktop Imaging's facility in Tawa where it could be stored securely while being digitised.

This is being carried out through a combination of on-demand scanning as files are requested and ongoing back-fill of other files. The digitised files are delivered via FTP and integrated into the council's TRIM EDRMS.

The process, expected to take two years, ensures records are available for multiple access round-the-clock and can be emailed on request. Eventually the paper files will be returned to a specialist storage facility in Rotorua.

Size and Scale - 41,116 Property Folders, 33,071 Properties, 2,196 Plan Tubes, >3,000,000 A4/A3 pages, >250,000 Plans



Data type/quantity - Multiple Multi-page PDF’s per property broken down into files based on content. RDC have elected for 9 categories of document with Building and Resource Consents generating one document per consent. Files are scanned using a combination of bitonal and colour scanning as required.