24 October marks one year since the official launch of ScotLIS, Scotland’s Land Information Service. ScotLIS is an innovative and intuitive service that offers comprehensive access to RoS data on land and property in Scotland.

Since launch, we’ve been hard at work continuing to develop the service, adding numerous improvements and features to the professional offering of ScotLIS, while refreshing the public proposition of ScotLIS as well.

Here, Jennifer Henderson, Keeper of the Registers of Scotland, shares her impression and experience of ScotLIS since she joined RoS as Keeper in April 2018.

What were your initial thoughts on ScotLIS when you first joined RoS?

I found ScotLIS before I even joined RoS – as part of my research into the work that RoS was doing, I found a link to ScotLIS and was really impressed that such an intuitive and useful tool was available. When I joined RoS I learned more about the legacy services such as Registers Direct that ScotLIS is replacing and when shown a comparison of the two, the superiority of ScotLIS quickly became clear. It’s a really user friendly service, and I think that in today’s business world that’s something that’s critical to success. In particular, from my initial introduction to ScotLIS, I liked the range and breadth of features found in the service.

Speaking of features, what would you say is the most important in your mind?

I would say the interactive map. There’s so much information held in it, especially the data layers that can be toggled on and off and the ability to search the land register directly from it, that it’s the key feature for both customers and RoS staff. I’m also excited that, in the coming year the team has the potential to explore using ScotLIS as a platform to link into other location and property data that is publically available from other organisations, with the goal of making it as easy as possible for people to find out everything they want to know about a place on the map. Like the rest of the service, they’ll do this based on close consultation with customers and user need.

How have you found the external reaction to ScotLIS among RoS customers and stakeholders?

Extremely positive. It’s a real testament to the ScotLIS team that when I’ve spoken to customers about our business developments and mentioned the retirement of our legacy service Registers Direct on 30 November, they’re positive about this change. They find ScotLIS such a better service to use that they’re happy for RD to be decommissioned.

Tell us a little bit about the team behind ScotLIS?

They’ve been fantastic from day one. From working with customers to understand their needs to delivering new features that meet them, they’ve been responsive and a flagbearer for our digital transformation.
I know their dedication to the service and how their hard work will continue after Registers Direct is retired and ScotLIS becomes our core land information service, and think they should feel incredibly proud of ScotLIS’s phenomenal success.

What does 2019 look like for ScotLIS?

We’ll be continuing to add new features and improvements to our business offering of ScotLIS, and the team will continue to make these priorities visible through their public roadmap. In the next few months we’ll also be working on ScotLIS for the public. As I mentioned earlier, we’ve refreshed our proposition for this, and our mission is to create a service that is developed around the tasks that the people of Scotland are looking to complete with regards to land and property in Scotland. Having personally used ScotLIS as a citizen when I was house-hunting up here I can really see the potential for it to be an incredibly useful tool.

If you’re a business user and new to the service, getting started with ScotLIS is easy. You can log in with your existing online services user name and password, and start experiencing ScotLIS for yourself.

To find out the latest on ScotLIS for business and public, visit our website or follow us on our social channels – you can find them at the bottom of this page.

Find out more!

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