11 Legal Executives New Zealand Spring 2026 Toitū Te Whenua Land Information New Zealand's massive project to replace Legacy Landonline has now been completed; all customers have now been moved to the upgraded platform. In July, LINZ issued a report entitled Modernising Landlonline The Survey and Title Enhancement Programme – Closure Report detailing the full story of the project and the lessons learned along the way. Landonline is an essential tool for legal executives, lawyers, conveyancers and surveyors undertaking property transactions. It is accessed every day by an average of 5,000 users. Between 2022-23, there were 2.9 million property searches; 281,000 titles were issued or reissued; and there were 500,000 property transactions. Landonline has 15,000 registered users. Original system The original digital system was implemented between 1999 and 2003. It was acknowledged as a world-leading first-generation digital transformation, with paper processes being 87% automated, survey and title data being integrated, and efficiency improving. Within a decade, however, the platform had become expensive to maintain, its security was questionable and it was unable to respond quickly to developments such as legislative reforms or changes in practice brought about by the explosion in technological advances. In 2015, Cabinet agreed that the best option was to replace Legacy Landonline with an extremely flexible, second-generation modular IT platform. In 2018, Cabinet approved an in-house build to modernise the existing system, rather than a 'big bang' replacement. It was calculated that in-house development would be $75 million cheaper than using a technology partner. At the time the programme's capital cost was estimated to be $128 million over a 12-year wholeof life period to 2030, with financial benefits totalling around the same amount. That figure was later increased to $175 million in capital costs following the challenges of the Covid pandemic; the delivery timeframe was extended by three years to 2026. Initial focus for project The report published by LINZ traces the history of the project, noting that work began in April 2019, with an initial focus on mobilising resources and building Agile delivery capability. LINZ said there had been a deliberate choice to start small, building capability and allowing LINZ to identify, learn and adapt to challenges early in the project. “This would put LINZ in a stronger position to carry out more complex work later in the programme and ensure that outputs were properly integrated with the business and aligned with LINZ strategic outcomes – to operate a world class property system and provide high value geographic and property information.” The report said that, in the first two years, the programme developed and successfully released a suite of relatively straightforward and low-risk customer service improvements. At the same time, proofs of concept were developed and work started on the more complex process of replacing the legacy platform. Went public in 2023 The new Landonline application was made publicly available in 2023, selfservice was introduced, and it became mandatory to start and finish survey capture activities in the new app. The following year, all customers were migrated to New Landonline and, in 2025, the platform shift for Modernised Landonline was completed and Legacy Landonline was switched off for external customers. Approximately 10,000 titles customers were migrated to the modernised platform in a phased approach in February-March 2025; the last of three surveying applications went to open release to 2,000 surveyor customers in July. Title customer access to the legacy platform was switched off in March 2025, and that for survey customers was discontinued from September. Learnings from the project The report concluded by outlining the lessons learned from the project and the factors critical to its success. The document said that an in-house build had allowed LINZ to use its resources as it saw fit and to have a high degree of control. Choosing a methodology SAFe (Scaled Agile Frameworks) and adhering to it rigorously had enabled the organisation to build a mature SAFe environment. Landonline modernisation story told as the project winds down Continued on page 12...
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