Cyient wins UK land digitization contract

Hyderabad-based mid-sized IT outsourcing provider Cyient Ltd said it, along with two partners, has won a contract to support one of UK government’s major land records digitization drives.

The three companies will support Her Majesty’s Land Registry, the UK government’s land records bureau, to digitize nearly 26 million titles, accounting for around 87% of the landmass of England and Wales.

The Indian company’s partners for the project are geospatial data and software provider Esri UK and documentation specialist Xerox.

The financial details or the size of the deal was not revealed. However, Cyient said it will “own” the entire process and provide a central management information platform, allowing for “single pane of glass” reporting, with the ability to drill down to prove data integrity and provenance.

Cyient will provide all spatial capture and improvement services as well as textual capture.

One of Cyient’s key roles would be to help Esri provide “a fully configured and customized version of the Esri SWEET software package, which will be used as the primary spatial capture and improvement tool” by the land registry.

Xerox will provide its Capture and Content Services, which use powerful artificial intelligence and machine learning, will automatically capture and validate information from digital and physical local land charge records.

The total value of the land under the registry is estimated at £7 trillion, and nearly £1 trillion worth of personal and commercial loans have been sanctioned against this land in England and Wales.

Currently, most of these records are only held with local authorities and the project will move them into a centralized digital register.

Once that is done, the UK government will be able to provide a “single and simple-to-use digital service” for homebuyers and conveyancers, Cyient said.

“Homebuyers and conveyancers expect easy and instant access to land records, because they make financial and legal decisions based on these documents,” pointed out Darren Cassidy, Managing Director for U.K. and Ireland, Xerox.

“Xerox services together with Cyient’s geospatial platform will automatically populate and enable a centralized digital register improving the citizen experience,” he added.