Improve Operational Excellence
Continually improve internal and customer-facing processes for a better service experience.
Operational Excellence
LTSA’s operational accomplishments are aimed at identifying and implementing continuous improvements. Key business initiatives and achievements delivered to support this objective include:
Customer Engagement and Experience
Customer feedback is critical for helping LTSA to maintain accountability, to learn how LTSA can improve and to inform business priorities. In addition to workshops and post-transaction feedback, the organization uses comprehensive results from the Customer Relationship Health Survey to identify ongoing enhancements to our customers’ experience. Using ongoing feedback from customers, LTSA introduced iterative changes that address the unique needs of different customer segments, improving the efficiency, accuracy and security of LTSA products and services.
Process Improvement (Operations)
During the year, LTSA received over 0.7 million land title applications, with 66.5% of the applications being processed automatically, compared to 64.8% in the prior year. LTSA continued to focus on improving average processing times and consistency of decision making by increasing automation and increasing customer success with applications to reduce defects. During this reporting period, a number of updates were introduced to increase form validations to reduce defects, and LTSA continued to introduce additional electronic filing options for property owners and the public. LTSA also worked with customers to reduce defects in the year through hosting webinars and education sessions, and preparing and updating materials and guides on the LTSA website to support customers through the application process.
Vault Records Program
LTSA recognizes the value of the vault records in its care and is committed to records preservation and to enabling broader access benefiting British Columbians. LTSA’s three-year vault records strategy continues to be implemented, including a robust digitization program where analogue records are converted to digital format for access, and a conservation program that ensures that highly used, decades-old historic records receive appropriate treatment to protect their integrity.
Discriminating Covenants
LTSA supports efforts to address discriminating covenants in land title records and is continuing to amend discriminating language in accordance with current legislation. With over 100 million records in paper and microfilm format, the effort to find and strike discriminating covenants is ongoing. Along with work to digitize historic records, LTSA is continuing to focus on extracting the highest quality text possible from digitized documents so that emerging artificial intelligence models can more easily assist in finding any remaining unaltered discriminating covenants. LTSA has recently completed a year-long project to remove discriminatory language from over 250 Crown grants that were issued in the early 1900s. Although legislation made such discriminatory provisions null and void long ago, the Surveyor General has issued declarations under s.52 of the Land Act to cancel the discriminatory terms and strike the text in the original documents.
Expanded Online Services
LTSA has expanded use of the BC Services Card, initially introduced for online applications from the general public, and now available for single-user account holders to sign in to their accounts. This digital identification provides an augmented verification process for customers to complete online transactions. With over 95% of transactions processed online and availability maintained at over 99% of scheduled access times, LTSA continued to introduce other incremental improvements to online services to help reduce submission errors and further increase LTSA’s automated transactions.
Quality Assurance Program
To ensure the accuracy and integrity of the land title register, the Director of Land Titles continued activities related to a Quality Assurance Program to maintain the accuracy of information and support continued customer trust and confidence in the register.
Land Owner Transparency Registry (LOTR)
The Land Owner Transparency Registry (LOTR) is a public, searchable database of information about beneficial ownership of land in British Columbia, established by the Province through the Land Owner Transparency Act. Beneficial land owners are people who own or control land indirectly, such as through a corporation, partnership or trust. LOTR launched on November 30, 2020, and opened to public search on April 30, 2021. Effective April 1, 2024, LOTR searches became available at no cost, making it easier for law enforcement agencies, journalists and researchers to identify money laundering and hidden ownership in B.C.
Surveyor General
The Surveyor General staff provided significant support to the Province including work related to agreements signed with First Nations across BC, developing a plan to guide the restoration of property boundaries after a natural disaster, and working with the Alberta-BC Boundary Commission to maintain monumentation along the border. Further work by the Surveyor General was completed to modernize the Survey Framework and transition to modern datums.