Transformational digitisation project moves ahead
Published on 27 June 2025
Following the successful pilot and the digitisation of 500 property files by Canon Business Services, Waitaki District Council has partnered with the digital imaging specialists to digitise the remaining 12,500 property files.
Council’s Transformation project identified increasing online access to our services as a key priority. A previous in-house project to digitise the hundreds of thousands of individual paper documents which make up the Waitaki District’s property files was a slower process which ultimately would have cost more and taken longer. By partnering with Canon Business Services, we have vastly increased the speed of document digitisation and the quality of the digital documents it is producing.
The Waitaki district has a wide variety of property files, some of which date back to the late-19th century. This involves extreme care being taken with older files to preserve their integrity during the digitisation process.
Council’s Digital Services team has also taken the opportunity to digitise previously scanned files to the new and much higher standard offered by Canon Business Services.
Because of large number of Ōamaru’s historical files and the additions files to be digitised, we have extended the length of the project to November 2026, at no extra cost to the ratepayer.
This project is a step towards the community being able to request property files online, or by phone, and receiving them digitally. As the project progresses, the community will be able to view an increasing number of property files online, making a key Council service much more accessible.
The project page for property file digitisation lists those property files that are currently with Canon for digitising. If a request is made for one of these files, a digital copy will be provided. Once a batch of property files are digitised, the original files and documents are returned to Waitaki District Council for storage.
ENDS
FAQs – Property File Digitisation
- So what’s going on then?
Council holds records for every property in the Waitaki District. This includes building and resource consents, correspondence with Council and more. They are currently stored at HQ.
- So what’s changing?
Council has partnered with Canon Business Services to scan and digitise every property file, which consists of hundreds of thousands of individual documents.
- What does that mean?
Once complete, when someone request a property file they will be able to receive a digital copy of the documents they are looking for – instead of coming into HQ to view the physical copy.
- Anything else?
Each document is being tagged with data, so that in future people will be able to request specific documents from property files – rather than the entire file. If you wanted to look at consents, or plans, or something else, you’ll be able to ask for that.
- Will we still be able to view physical copies?
Yes, but we anticipate the turnaround for digital copies to be far faster than next-working-day as it is right now.
- Why is this taking until November 2026?
Waitaki has many heritage buildings, and that means many of the documents contained in property folders require extreme care when being digitised. This includes the large scale plans for buildings like Council’s 140 year old HQ, which are part of our property file.
We’re also taking the opportunity to digitise the files we’d previously done in-house, as the quality of the Canon Business Services imaging is much higher.