(Borneo Post; April 7, 2010)

MUKAH: Sarawak's Land and Survey Information System (LASIS) has attracted the interest of authorities in Australia and Morocco.

Land and Survey Department's director Datuk Sudarsona Osman said he would be going to Sydney in Australia soon and Morocco by next year to give briefings on the integrated land administration system developed in the state.

"The briefings are at their invitations", he said at the launch of the system for the Mukah Division by Chief Minister Pehin Sri Abdul Taib Mahmud here yesterday.

The system has been continuously enhanced since it was jointly developed 25 years ago at a cost of RM2.56 million.

The developers are the Land and Survey Department, Sarawak Information Systems Sdn Bhd (SAINS) and the Information and Communication Unit of the Chief Minister's Department.

Leveraging on technology, it has improved the department's service delivery to a new level and transformed some of its working culture.

It now allows one-day registration of land instruments with automated e-mail notification to inform legal firms instantly upon their registration.

The system allows online payment of land rent and premium and also enables landowners to view the rent record prior to the payment.

LASIS provides title search facility to the public for them to search land titles at any land and survey divisional offices at a nominal fee.

Online submission and approval of land applications between the department headquarters and the divisional offices can be done without physical documents.

The system allows digital submission of survey jobs by private surveyors. The fully integrated data sets permit the information to be made available on demand to facilitate intelligent analysis and reliable decision making.

To date, the system implemented in two phases too has designed and developed over 200 different software solutions.

But they are yet to be widely used by the state government's ministeries and departments, statutory bodies, federal agencies and the corporate sector.

Among the solutions are a number of applications that have won the highest recognitions and awards internationally and locally.

These include the United Nations World Summit Award, The Prime Minister's ICT Quality Award and the Malaysia MSC APICTA Award.

For the Land and Survey Department, LASIS facilitates land planning, survey computation, cadastral mapping, land alienation and land valuation.

It has recorded 102,000 cases of land transactions worth over RM13.3 billion, according to Sudarsono.

He said the time was right to look into data sharing between government agencies at a reasonable costs to avoid duplication and cost.