Blog by Lindsay Yeoman, Senior Business Development Manager at Registers of Scotland.
I’ve just returned from Gavle, Sweden, where I attended the European Land Information Service (EULIS) AGM. Founded in 2005 to create a European portal for the online exchange of land information, EULIS has found itself at the threshold of a new era.
The impending arrival of the European e-Justice Land Registers Interconnection (LRI) portal meant that the current EULIS portal will soon become obsolete. With this in mind the focus of the AGM concentrated on the future direction of EULIS in response to this important development.
The 16 participants representing 11 member countries decided that the EULIS portal should close by 1st July this year, and that EULIS as an organisation should also dissolve late 2017/early 2018. We unanimously agreed that the right decision was taken, as the new LRI portal will ensure continued effective communication instead.
Maintaining an international presence provides RoS with a platform to meet with land registration colleagues from all over the world. Hearing about the challenges others face, whether it be 3D mapping in Macedonia or the use of Blockchain technology in Sweden, helps us collect informed and relevant case studies into areas that we may look to develop in the future. It also provides gateways to new opportunities which we are keen to explore. For example, we’ve partnered with several other European land registration organisations to support a new project, led by the Estonian Land Register, to build an open source land register system. This would provide wide-reaching benefits both for RoS and for European land registration in general – we hope to find out the result of our bid soon.
Moving forward a regular International Engagement Group composed of representatives from Business Development, Registration and Legal Services will co-ordinate our activity. We remain valued members of the European Land Registry Association (ELRA), EuroGeographics, Cadastre and Land Registry Knowledge Exchange Network (CLRKEN) and the Working Party on Land Administration (UNECE WPLA). The International Engagement Group will specifically focus on identifying where RoS can generate the most value and impact from these membership bodies and other networks.
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