Introducing a Complete New Land Register & E

Draft paper INTRODUCING A COMPLETE NEW LAND REGISTER & E-CONVEYANCING SYSTEM A description of the complete renewal of the Dutch Land Register & e-conveyancing system

JACOB VOS1 BERNARDUS HENDRIKUS JOHANNES ROES2 [email protected] [email protected]

1 Registrar at Kadaster 2 Chief registrar at Kadaster

Draft paper to present at the “2020 WORLD BANK CONFERENCE ON LAND AND POVERTY” The World Bank – Washington DC, March 16-20, 2020

Copyright 2020 by author(s). All rights reserved. Readers may make verbatim copies of this document for non-commercial purposes by any means, provided that this copyright notice appears on all such copies.

Introduction

The Land Register in the Netherlands has a new heart at its core. The final transition from the old to the new IT system was completed on 17 October 2018. The obsolete system for maintaining the Land Register was replaced by a new and future-proof one called ‘KOERS’. It was a major operation: 1.3 TB of data, 10.1 million cadastral objects and 8.2 million mortgages and seizures were migrated. Successfully. More than a year on the renewed Land Register turned out to have far exceeded its expectations. The implementation of business rules caused the quality of data in the real estate chain to increase while, despite the extra quality guarantees, the timeliness of the registration process remain high. This article will describe the need for the Dutch Cadastre, Land Registry and Mapping Agency – in short, Kadaster – to renew the Land Register. It will then explain the specific requirements for the new ICT system and what this meant for the real estate chain. The approach and method of renewal will then be discussed, along with how the new system went live and how the migration of all data was handled. As a matter of course there will be a description of the lessons learned and success factors of the project. A start has been made on renewing the way documents are delivered to the Deed Register, now that the Land Register has been renewed. We are currently hard working on a com- pletely new way of delivering documents, that will benefit the way documents are processed in the new Land Register. Unlike the (earlier) renewal process of the Land Regis- ter, where only the output of the system – in the shape of information products – and the planning of the implementation touched the external parties, the renewal of the system in which deeds, seizures and other documents are submitted to the Land Register for registration touches the external parties directly, which is why Kadaster is realising this project in close cooperation with the various stakeholders.

Motive

The registration system for maintaining the Land Register, also called the Key Land Register (‘BRK’ in its Dutch acronym) dates back to 1990. It was the Kadaster’s first digital registration system. Maintaining the Land Register (now called BRK) had previously occurred manually. The system was technically outdated, using technology from the 1980s. The moment that the system could no longer be maintained came ever closer, with at one hand a technology that became out of date and on the other hand expertise for per- forming maintenance that became more and more scarce. This posed an ever-increasing risk to the Land Register’s continuity.

Neither could the old system meet the requirements set by its users. Changes in the law or justified wishes of users sometimes required functional adaptations, but it was increasing- ly difficult to build this new functionality into the existing registration system. For example, the old registration system did not allow for the possibility of stacking more than three rights in rem on a plot (stacked rights). This despite the fact that growing numbers of building technologies had been applied in recent decades, whereby the different parts of buildings no longer had straightforward interconnections, but appeared to be in- geniously intertwined. Architectural masterpieces, which then had to be given a legal jacket. Growing numbers of three-dimensional situations were thus being described in notarial deeds, where property rights are combined to assign rights to persons in spaces above and below each other. An unlimited stacking of rights in rem on the plot was therefore a prerequisite for improv- ing the accessibility of these constructions in the Land Register.

It was also no longer sufficient for the registration system to function as a kind of stand- alone transaction system. Instead it had to be flexible and able to establish links with other registrations, so as to reflect the current legal status of a plot of land, with rights and rightholders, in all situations and under all circumstances. This was mainly due to the fact that, since 2008, the Land Register had been designated as a so-called key register, together with, among other things, the key register of persons by the municipalities and the trade register of the Chamber of Commerce. This designation to key register meant that governments were obliged to use data from other key registers if such data was deemed to be authentic in the other registers. For example, in terms of the personal data of

3 rightholders, the land registry is obliged to keep this data up to date by linking with the key register of persons. In the future, an actual connection will also make it possible to modernise the links further, and to set them up based on the principle of obtaining data directly from its source.

Finally, the old Land Register system did not adequately support the fully automatic processing of documents. Certainly, documents were offered in a way that made fully automatic processing possible, but from a technical system aspect, it was still not possible to process these documents in a single process step. The processing of these documents was handled partially automatic; the data was presented to the employees in their screens, after which with a few manual handling it was recorded in the Land Register1. The new registration system has solved this problem, in a way that the data can be processed fully automatically in a single process step. Renewal of the registration system was therefore extremely necessary to guarantee continuity, increase the flexibility of the system and reap the benefits of efficient collection.

What has been achieved?

The new ‘KOERS’ registration system is based on and offers the possibility of the automatic processing of documents based on business rules that are previously defined. In the old system, a part of the deeds were offered by means of so-called style sheets, also called KIK deeds2. By using stylesheets in the Dutch Deed Register (since 2008), scruti- nizing of the deeds, fulfilling the checks and requirements for registration purposes and to a certain extent checking on meeting specific conditions is done in an automated way. These deeds are suitable for automated processing, and currently constitute more than 40% of the total work load. The remaining 60% of the deeds are assessed by an employee (checking requirements for recording deeds) and after accepting and recording the deed,

1 Unlike the data that are recorded in the Land Register, the document itself is recorded in the Deed Register. Both are maintained by Kadaster 2 For an extended description of the KIK deeds that are based on stylesheets: VOS et al (2017). / Vos, Jacob, Lemmen, Christiaan and Beentjes, Bert, Blockchain-based Land Administration; feasible, illusory or a pana- cae?, paper presented at the 2017 World Bank Conference on land and Poverty, The EWorld Bank, Washington DC, March 20-24, 2017.

4 the essentials of the deed are processed manually. The employee then has to make various choices in terms of processing the deed and the registration.

Since October 2018, fully automatic processing of KIK deeds became possible in the new registration system. Uptill the moment of implementation of the new system and despite the fact that the data of the KIK deeds was suitable to be processed fully automatically, the employee still had to deliver partial manual processing by making choices in the system based on processing rules. In making these choices the employee had a certain freedom and interpretation space. This is now a thing of the past. For the 60% of the deeds that remained, these choices are now made automatically based on the data in the deeds regarding subjects, objects and rights that have been entered manually to the system by the employee. The system than processes this data automatically. This is possible because all processing rules have been elaborated in business rules. These business rules are a translation of business processes and procedures and can be applied automatically.

In addition, KOERS is also based on the principle that data may only be accessed once it has been validated. In the old system, an item was included in the registration stating that checks had not yet been fully completed. Only when all documents of a certain date had been processed throughout the country, this message was removed. A different working method has been in place following KOERS. All documents offered are kept per object, and when a document is processed, a 100% check is carried out immediately as to whether the objects show a correct reference to the deed. In other words: where the old system first made data accessible and then checked, KOERS makes only validated data accessible, where accessibility occurs after necessary checks have been performed. This working method makes it possible to indicate the current legal status of the parcel for each object, and provides quicker certainty as to how the legal acts included in a registered item have been registered.

For example: a deed of delivery will be presented on 30 January 2020 at 11:30. In accordance with the standard in the Quality Charter3, all items with an offer date of 30 Jan- uary will be reported to the relevant objects throughout the country at 09:00 on 31 Janu-

3 In the Quality Charter of Kadaster, service level agreements with customers are displayed, including the agreements on the duration of accepting a deed, signalizing a deed and processing a deed.

5 ary at the latest. E.g. if the deed of delivery will be processed in full on 31 January at 14:00. Immediately after the item has been fully processed, KOERS will report for the parcel of land on 31 January at 14:00 that all documents relating to this object and offered up to and including 30 January have been fully processed. Because the checks have already occurred, these are the validated dates and the object information will not wait until all checks for all documents have taken place throughout the country.

The data structure used to keep records has been thoroughly revised with effect from KOERS. Analysis prior to the development of KOERS showed that in 99.9% of cases, maintaining the registration can be carried out with 137 legal facts (‘elements’) (incorpo- rating several variants within them). These legal facts have always formed the basis of the development process. The automated processing of items became possible by taking fixed legal facts as a starting point. Explanations and free texts to indicate the legal status of parcels of land are thus avoided as far as possible. It is not possible to exclude free texts entirely. There may always be facts and circumstances that still need to be used. Howev- er, these can only be included in KOERS with the legal fact called ‘Explanation registrar’. This legal fact can only be included in the Land Register by the registrar, which provides an extra guarantee that special cases and situations are always taken into account by the land registrar, and that the land registrar is the only one to make the decision. Fi- nally, the land registrar is fully responsible for the way in which the Land Register is updated.

In KOERS, additional checks are carried out to increase legal certainty. Among these is checking whether the cadastral designation and the size of a parcel of land reported in the deed correspond with the information about it included in the BRK. If the size reported in the deed differs significantly from the size of the relevant parcel known in the BRK, the system will issue a warning, and the provider of the document, predominantly notaries and judicial officers, can be contacted to check whether there is an error in the cadastral designation or size stated in the deed. This prevents a legal act from being registered with the wrong property, which increases the quality of the data in the property chain.

Secondly, KOERS checks automatically whether the rights and rightholders included in the document correspond with the existing registration in the BRK, for example whether

6 the transferor in the deed corresponds with the rightholder in the BRK. There may occa- sionally be a valid reason for a deviation, for example if the rightful claimant has died and the heirs act as transferors in the deed of transfer.4 In such cases KOERS routes the document to an employee. That employee will then check whether the power of disposal of the heirs is stated in the deed. Should this be the case, the deed will then be processed in the BRK. If the power of disposal of these heirs is not explained in the deed, the land registrar will ask the notary to improve his or her deed on this point. In the event of a transfer, a check is also made to ensure that the property rights declared applicable in the document correspond to what is stated in the BRK. Should there be de- viations, the notary will be alerted to this.

KOERS is also based on the principle of bringing the registration more in line with the legal situation. Where the old system stacked a maximum of three limited rights on one right, in KOERS it is possible to ‘stack’ several rights on top of each other, and to display this as such when consulting the BRK. Because of this, the legal situation is shown in the BRK as much as possible. This is furthermore helped by mentioning and showing the type of the legal fact with the unique identification number of the document that is shown on the property or mortgage information. Another example of the possibility of bringing the registration further in line with the legal situation concerns cases where various divisions into apartment rights on a single plot of land have taken place. In the big cities of the Netherlands, it occurs regulary that the right of leasehold on a plot of land is split into several apartment rights. A complex number is assigned to the plot of land as a result of this division. If another right relating to the same plot of land is subsequently included in another division, for example the property charged with the leasehold right, a second division must be allocated to the plot of land. This was not possible in the old system, but it is in the new one. In the old system, separate notes and explanatory texts had therefore to be included in the BRK. In the new system, it is recorded that an apartment right arose from the division of

4 In the Dutch -semipositive- system of land registration recording a Declaration of Inheritance is allowed, but not obliged. Therefore it is possible that the person that is named in the deed a rightful owner (the heir) is another person than the person that is shown in the BRK as rightful owner (the deceased). Kadaster promotes recording of Declarations of Inheritance, among others by determining a zero euro fee for the recording of these declarations.

7 the right of leasehold, and that the same apartment index also arose in the division of the bare ownership. A rightholder can be registered for both rights.

Approach and method General One of the objectives of the Kadaster was to carry out replacement of the Land Register within the lead time set, and within the estimated costs. Ultimately, this objective was in fact achieved. A precondition for being able to do this is to keep the project as small and as manageable as possible. This was achieved by keeping the scope to a minimum (with 137 legal facts), opting for the simplicity of solutions, and opting for an incremental approach in the realisation.

In principle, the project was limited to the renewal of the registration and processing processes that took place on the old mainframe. The starting point was chosen functionally as a one-on-one replacement leading to a future-proof conversion of all functions developed on the mainframe. In other words, without having to include adjoining systems (such as WEB ELAN for the delivery of deeds). However, data, functions and interfaces no longer needed were not rebuilt.

It was not possible to deviate from this scope (e.g. an acute and necessary renewal) unless by means of an assessment framework where the need for realisation was demon- strated together with clear benefits in terms of costs, risk, planning and/or quality.

Incremental approach The project was based on an incremental approach where the work to be carried out in accordance with the Scrum method was performed in the smallest possible chunks, with short-cycle deliveries in an acceptance test environment taking place every two to three weeks.

The total quantity of work is broken down into:  Streams. A stream is a logical clustering of parallel activities. Two streams were used, one for developing the registration functionality, and one for the adjoining systems.

 Increments: These are classifications in time and budget concluding in an important (logical) milestone expected to provide a clearer picture of the continuation. For example, starting small was chosen, with a system able to process common legal facts. It was decided to start with the transfer of ownership as a basis and to then build the system further.  Sprints: in accordance with the scrum method, the increments were set up using sprints lasting two to three weeks.

Optimisation of the manageability was achieved by taking a number of measures, the following being the most important:  Incremental development (Agile);  Agile development was always prepared by a legal facts preparation team. This team was interdisciplinary. It consisted of people with an ICT background, alongside others with a legal administrative background. One of the land registrars of the land registry took part in this team, and was present during the project to provide functional leadership to the team. The land registrar approved the drawn-up specifications, and was also present at the Sprint review. Based on the Sprint review, functional specifications were adjusted or the development process was adjusted.  The delivery per increment was tested by shadowing production staff. The findings were immediately fed back so that adjustments could be made. This way of working also ensured that the production staff became familiar with it.  Focus on a minimum scope by applying the assessment framework and the ‘simplicity of solution’ principle;  Realisation under our own direction, but with external expertise where necessary.

Communication An important part of the approach was also to provide timely, correct and sufficient information to the various external target groups throughout the transition: the ‘start-up period’, the ‘go-live’ and the ‘aftercare period’ regarding the BRK renewal. The communication was divided into three parts: First, strategic communication, where a general core message was formulated during the project and progress information was added gradually. This communication began prior to the first product and process changes. There was also product and process communica-

9 tion. This comprised product and process change information, always provided at an ac- ceptable time before the change was implemented. Finally, regarding the planned go-live moment, there was communication about the introduction of the system (date, working method, how to act by whom) prior to the go-live itself.

Big bang and migration An important choice that also had to be made was whether or not to put all functionality into production at once (‘big bang’). Alongside choosing to complete the realisation of the BRK in one go, to test it and to take it into production, there was the choice of an incremental delivery (‘continuous delivery’); the application is then divided into smaller functional parts and these are taken into production.

Although an incremental delivery seemed attractive in terms of reducing risk, the result of the consideration was not to prefer this in this project. This was mainly due to the fact that continuous delivery was only possible if a solution was first developed to synchro- nise the old and new databases. This was extremely difficult because of the differences in data structure. Developing a synchronisation solution was also adjudged to be very time- consuming and expensive, and could jeopardise the realisation of the project. A big bang scenario was thus chosen: the transition from the old to the new system would take place over one weekend. This meant that measures were needed well in advance of the migration weekend, to limit the risks during that weekend. 1) A trial migration was carried out every week or two weeks until the moment of going live. All rights, rightholders, objects and special situations were counted here (old versus new). This enables findings from the migration to come to light as early as possible, so that they can be resolved. 2) Trial transitions In trial transitions, the actions were practised that had to be carried out during the migration weekend. Not only was the migration carried out in the strict sense of the word (see sub 1), but the adjacent systems were also migrated and a fall-back was performed to restore the initial situation for production. 3) Tests and test types The migration software was tested at a range of levels. This ranged from unit tests to

integration and regression tests. A prerequisite for a GO for the migration was the ap- proval by the chief land registrar of an all-encompassing test report on the migration software. This test report showed the latest results of all relevant migration software tests and any failures that occurred, as well as an estimation of whether failures could be solved manually within the limited time of the migration weekend. 4) Additional checks a) Cross-check trial production A cross-check was performed several times to ensure that the mutations in KOERS would have the same effect as the mutations in the old registration system and that they would have been migrated correctly. KOERS was loaded initially from the old registration system (migration). Then over a number of weeks, the same deeds were (partially) processed in KOERS and in the old registration (trial production). A new migration was made from the old to the new system after this period. This involved comparing the newly migrated data against the data from the trial production present in KOERS. This data had to match. b) Output comparison The same output product was requested from the old registration system and from KOERS after a period of shadow production. These products were compared against each other and when the same documents where processed in the old registration system and KOERS, the output products had to be equal. c) XML output XML messages were requested for specifically selected objects, to ensure that the migrated objects in KOERS matched the objects as they were recorded in the old registration system. These messages had to be the same for each object.

Go-live Given the closing times of the public registers between Friday afternoon 15:00 and Mon- day morning 09:00, the project steering committee decided that the go-live should occur over a weekend. This became the weekend of 13/14 October 2018. The go-live was carried out step by step. Nine GO/NOGO moments were scheduled so that an explicit decision could be made after each step to stop the go-live and roll back the system to the moment just before the start of the go-live. The role of each person involved in going live was explained in the so-called RACI matrix. RACI is an acronym derived from the four key responsibilities most typically used: Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, and In-

11 formed. It is used for clarifying and defining roles and responsibilities in cross-functional or departmental projects and processes. Here the chief land registrar was assigned an important, and in a number of cases decisive, role.

In the first phase of the go-live, from the offer day on Thursday, 11 October 2018, all documents were routed to the KOERS environment, to be processed in a shadow environment. They would then be queued until they could be admitted to the new system. Then it was ensured that all documents (with offer date up to and including Wednesday, 10 October) were fully processed in the old system by Friday evening at the latest.

The migration software was then run from Saturday night onwards (second phase). This converted all data from the old registration system into the new KOERS system. The migration was recorded using failure lists, count checks and functional checks. Once the conversion was completed and the results of the failure lists, count checks and functional checks had been submitted to the chief land registrar, he gave his agreement to continue the migration.

In the third phase, the new documents (from offer day Thursday) were then admitted to the new system from the queue. On Sunday a team of employees retrieved and resolved the outage of documents from the system. The signal was then given to work in the new system nationwide.

At the end of the first production day on Monday afternoon, all findings were collected to determine whether KOERS was able to continue definitively. After this decision a roll- back to the old registration system would no longer be possible. Ultimately this turned out to be the most difficult decision of all. On the first production day, the adjoining information system had experienced performance problems. Thus it was decided on Monday evening not to give a definite GO, awaiting a better performance. That performance would eventually improve quickly, so that the final GO decision could still be made on Wednesday, 17 October.

Success factors and lessons learned More than a year after going live, the transition to the new registration system can be con- sidered a major success. The data from the system is of good quality (it amply achieved a

12 standard of 99.5% accuracy), by working with business rules, the quality of the data across the entire chain has increased, and the timeliness of the system remains high. For example, all documents of Thursday 30 January 2020 were signaled at their relevant parcels Friday 31 January 2020 at latest. And, with a few exceptions, the Land Register was fully updated to include the latest data up to and including Tuesday, 28 January 2020, while regarding the Quality Charter it would have been sufficient if this had been Tues- day 23 January 2020. A number of factors have determined the success of the implementation: - Interdisciplinary collaboration. Physically bringing together people with different areas of expertise has borne fruit. People with a legal-administrative, geodetic and information-technical background proved to be able to work together very effec- tively. Because everyone approached a problem from their own perspective, there was an occasional danger of linguistic confusion. But ambiguities quickly emerged because of the short lines of communication, and they could be corrected immediately. This is far more effective than communicating with each other remotely (despite all the modern technology at our disposal). It also gave broad layers of the organisation a serious commitment to working with the new system. This was evi- dent during the go-live weekend when more than 100 employees came to the office voluntarily on Sunday to help solve any problems that might arise during going live. - The Agile approach worked. It turned out to work very well for specifying, developing and reviewing in sprints of two to three weeks. Any misconceptions surfa- ced quickly and could be corrected immediately. - The team that specified was under the functional leadership of a land registrar, who was also physically on-site and operated within the team. - Considerable time was invested in the proper preparation and execution of the migration, with many checks and trial migrations being carried out every two weeks over a two-year period. This implementation also took place under the functional leadership of a land registrar, so that in case of problems, there was immediate legal expertise to solve them. - Employees could practise in the new system by processing items in a shadow environment. All employees also had to undergo a training course and were tested to see if they were ‘KOERS-proof’.

The most important advice we would like to offer those who are about to renew an existing registration system is to take control of the development of a system themselves. It may not be necessary to develop an entirely separate registration system in all cases, instead using existing technology and systems or modules. It may also be perfectly possible to outsource parts of the development of the registration system under certain circumstances. An important insight we gained, however, is that given the specific expertise needed to understand the primary land registration processes, the internal management of the Dutch Land Registry has worked far better than having it managed by an external par- ty.

THE RENEWAL OF THE E-CONVEYANCING PROCESS

After finishing this extensive project at the end of 2018, early this year (2020) Kadaster started a new project to replace the current system for the application of registration of deeds and other documents in the Deed Register. Being one of the first countries that implemented an electronic method to send official documents and deeds to the registrar in 2005, now the ‘dialectics of progress’, amplified by emerging technologies, requires a swift approach, design and implementation of a complete new portal or platform to send and share information with regard to the status of (to be) sent documents and deeds. This portal or platform is to be designed in close cooperation with the key players in e- conveyancing, e.g. notaries, judicial officers and their IT-specialists. To secure proof of all parties involved, the new platform will provide more measures and means to create sources of proof. The introduction of this new to be built platform is planned for 2021.

Legal design of the current process

Documents are currently offered via an application the Land Registry developed and implemented in-house in 2005. Using qualified electronic signatures was not yet an every- day routine at that time. Plans had been in place since the late 1990s to enable documents to be submitted electronically. The Land Registry attempted to bring all software suppli-

14 ers of those offering documents into line. This turned out to be more difficult than expected. Simple copying a best practice was not possible, given that no Dutch government agency had yet made use of signing documents with an electronic signature equivalent to a handwritten signature, despite the fact that with the aid of Directive 1999/93/EC of the European Parliament, and of the Council of 13 December 1999 on a Community framework for electronic signatures5, it became possible to give legal substance to the equiva- lence between a handwritten and a qualified or other electronic signature. This equalisa- tion found a direct national legal basis through an amendment to the Dutch Civil Code (Article 15a of Book 3 of the Dutch Civil Code), in which reference was made to the Di- rective. Nevertheless, the cadastral regulations needed to be amended in this respect. Re- vision I of the Land Registry Act came into force on 1 September 2005. This Act provided for the amendment of the Land Registry Act, the Implementation Act of the Land Reg- istry Act, the Organisation Act of Land Registry and some other laws, making it possible, among other things, to apply information and communication technology in the messaging related to keeping the public registers and the provision of information from them. However, the subordinate regulations (the Land Registry Decree, the Implementation Regulation 1994 and the Land Registry Regulation 1994) had not yet been adapted to the Revision Act by 1 September 2005. Now that the Land Registry Office and its clients had already brought their business operations into line with the Revision Act some time previously, the Land Registry Office and its clients wanted to start using information and communication technology in their communications in anticipation of the lower regulations coming into force. The ministry responsible at the time made this possible by issu- ing a circular describing the conditions under which clients of the Land Registry Office could make use of information and communication technology in their messaging with the Land Registry. The circular was replaced some time later by the intended amendment of the lower cadastral regulations. The Directive has since been replaced by a European Regulation6, which means that Eu- ropean regulations no longer need to be implemented in national legislation, and direct implementation is derived from the European regulations. However, the aforementioned Article 3:15a of the Dutch Civil Code still refers to the European Regulation.

5 https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:31999L0093&from=EN. 6 COUNCIL REGULATION (EU) 2018/2056 of 6 December 2018 amending Regulation (EU) No 216/2013 on the electronic publication of the Official Journal of the European Union, see: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal- content/EN/ALL/?uri=CELEX%3A32014R0910.

Practical design of the current process

In 2005 it was not only the legislator, but also the parties offering documents at the Land Registry, such as notaries and bailiffs, who had no experience with the regulations and the use of qualified electronic signatures. It was the realisation by the Land Registry of the Web-ELAN web application which for the first time gave those providing documents at the Land Registry the opportunity to sign documents electronically and submit them for registration. The Web-ELAN application is a stand-alone application that the user can download, in- stall and use without charge. With the application the provider can call up, select and then sign a document stored in PDF format locally or in a cloud. The provider uses a qualified electronic signature acquired for this purpose prior to use of the application, and issued by a Qualified electronic trust provider. The provider can immediately choose to sign up to 15 documents, whether or not accompanied by attachments or supporting documents to be registered, and then submit these to the Land Registry for registration in a single message. Once the message has been received by the Land Registry Office, the document is checked for a number of technical requirements. One of these is a check by a cryptoserver of the validity of the electronic signature under the email message. If the document does not meet all the stipulated technical standards, it will not be processed any further and a message of rejection will be sent. No substantive assessment of the document will take place. Should the document meet the technical requirements, the supplier will receive an electronic proof of receipt after sending the document (or documents). However, this does not mean that the document is actually registered; the proof of receipt is only a notification that the document has been received correctly. To register a document, its content must meet the legal requirements for registration. Should the document not meet these registration requirements, a notice of non-registration will be sent to its provider. If the document does meet the registration requirements, the provider will receive proof of registration immediately after evaluation of these requirements. If the document has been both received and registered, an improvement may nevertheless be necessary for the application of the document in the registration. In that case a request for rectification will be sent to the provider. All messages and alerts will be sent to the provider electronically.

A drawback in the current way of presenting documents and further correspondence electronically is the use of the email protocol. This may cause some time to elapse between the moment of sending by the provider, and the moment of receipt by the Land Registry Office, and vice versa. The email message from the provider follows the S/MIME protocol, which means that a message is sent over the internet via the provider’s user agent. The internet is a collection of nodes of networks (Message Transfer Agents, hereinafter referred to as MTAs). When the MTA tries to forward the message but does not receive a transmitted message back, the MTA tries to send the message again. If the transmission fails again, the MTA tries to forward the message again one hour later. This is called scheduling. After the last MTA has forwarded the message to the user agent of the Land Registry Of- fice, the message is received by the Land Registry Office. After receipt of the message, the time of receipt is determined and the provider receives a proof of receipt. The late receipt of documents by the Land Registry Office can arise from the previously described scheduling. This can lead to a situation where a provider – in case of delayed delivery of his/her message or a delayed receipt in response to his/her submission – de- cides because of the certainty of obtaining a time of receipt, to offer the document to be registered again, resulting in a double registration (in many cases with different times of registration). It also happens that two or more related legal acts must be submitted for registration in a specific order. In such cases, to avoid an incorrect order of submission, the provider is advised to pay close attention to the sequence in which the documents are offered, and to wait for receipt of the relevant notice of receipt after each separate transmission to the Land Registry, before submitting a new request for registration in respect of the subsequent document.

Advantages of the new system to be implemented

From 2021, documents submitted for registration will be submitted via an electronic platform, applying the WYSIWYG principle: ‘what you see is what you get.’ The idea of the stand-alone application is abandoned with the design and development of the new software. The provider of the item will identify him/herself on the new platform to be developed, by logging in with his/her login details. After logging in, a document can be up- loaded and prepared for signing and despatch. These last two actions are reserved for the final provider; the signing and subsequent submission for registration can only occur with

17 a qualified electronic signature, accompanied with a qualified electronic professional certificate. This maintains the freedom for support staff to carry out the preparatory work, which relieves the actual provider of the burden in his/her regular work. New is the use of multiple Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) for providers who already use the services of their own software supplier for the preparation of documents to be submitted for registration. A Graphical User Interface (GUI) will be developed for suppliers who do not use the services of a software supplier. From the GUI or the APIs, providers will see on the screen whether the action they perform is successful or not. This means the provider immediately sees whether the document has been received or not. The provider also sees a warning on the screen when using a certificate whose validity is de- batable, for example if the certificate is listed on the Certification Revocation List. Here it is intended that the provider will not be able to use the method of offering documents at all; access will be denied to him or her, stating the reason why. The advantage is an early detection of deficiencies, as a result of which both the repair and other work of the provider and that of the Land Registry will be kept to a minimum. Finally, the provider is asked to add so-called metadata when submitting the document for registration. This metadata provides information about the type of deed, the possible de- pendence of this document on another document, and the type of registered property involved in the document. With this metadata, which is purely indicative in nature and from which neither the Land Registry Office nor the provider can derive any rights, the provider will add core data that can help the Land Registry Office to gain insight into the work stock to be handled; immediately after the documents have been delivered, the Land Reg- istry Office can use the metadata to route the number and type of documents received internally to specific employees or teams. This lets it optimise its workflow control further where possible. The advantage for the provider is the correct sequence of processing of documents that are interdependent in terms of content, such as the mortgage deed associated with the delivery, or the deed of division and the subsequent delivery of the individual apartment rights. This will further reduce the number of requests for rectification. Another reason why a reduction in the number of rectification requests might be expected is the check during the delivery process as to whether or not the same file has been selected twice. Checking the size, name and metadata associated with the file could warn the provider that the same item has been offered again for registration. With this new method of sending documents, the number of requests for rectification is likely to decrease, very early

18 certainty is given on the competence of the provider, and the real estate chain is opti- mised. Since the entire real estate chain is affected by this, the Land Registry works very closely with its chain partners and the software suppliers of these chain partners on the development of this new software to be developed. Knowledge sessions are organised where everyone has a say and can share best practices, connecting with the current practice of documents being delivered by two large supplier groups to other partners and chain partners, and joint research is conducted into the technical and organisational measures and links that can be established with other registers and registrations that are important before and during the provision of documents.