In June 2005, a writer for the Guardian newspaper was upbeat about plans to computerise the home-buying and selling process. Digitisation will re-engineer the way conveyancing is done in this country, the article enthused.. 'Not only does e-conveyancing have the potential to reduce the anxieties of house buying, it might also make it cheaper.'
I remember the article, because I was its author. Over the next couple of decades I knocked out several pieces on similar lines, covering the rise and fall of HM Land Registry's 'Chain Matrix' project and the Law Society's own attempt to build a system under the brand name Veyo. More recently, I attended the launch conference of the Digital Home Buying and Selling Group, sharing with Gazette readers the group's enthusiasm for Norway as a model to follow. (It is fair to say that some readers, with vastly more experience of property transactions than I, disagreed.)
How exciting then, to hear the weekend media trailing 'major new plans to modernise home buying and selling', involving digital data. Have we finally cracked e-conveyancing?
It seems not. On the surface, today's 'major new plans' are disappointingly light on detail. The main new announcement seems to be of a 12-week project 'to identify the design and implementation of agreed rules on data for the sector, so that it can easily be shared between conveyancers, lenders and other parties involved in a transaction'. We're talking here about the sharing of such things as building control and highways information; not exactly state secrets.
That 'agreed rules' still need to be set is depressing. The current housing minister, Mathew Pennycook, probably doesn't know this, but the basic principle that public sector information could and should be digital and shareable was set by the EU's PSI Directive in 2003, adopted by Gordon Brown's Labour government under an initiative called the Power of Information in 2007. It was picked up again, in the name of efficiency, by the Cabinet Office under the 2010 coalition government. The fact we're only now starting to work on the 'design and implementation of agreed rules' says much about public policy in the UK.
Further down, the announcement is a line which kicks us back to another moment in Groundhog Day. This brings up the government's plans for 'digital identity verification services', which, among other things will remove the need for certfication of paper identity documents (and with it a small but useful earner for some high street practices). This is a modernised version of Tony Blair's identity card scheme, abandoned by the coalition government on civil liberties grounds.
In the current iteration, digital identities will not be issued by a single big brother but by commercial service providers certified as meeting the rules of the 'UK digital identity and attributes trust framework'. According to the responsible quango, the Office for Digital Identities and Attributes (yes, OfDIA), 55 such providers currently have services at beta release; some are already offering ID vertification services to law firms. We can expect OfDIA's public profile to grow rapidly as ministers call on it to help solve problems in the health, benefits and immigration sectors.
But back to property transactions. If we can finally crack the sharing of data along the conveyancing process, secured by robust digital identity checks, perhaps we will be able finally to enter e-conveyancing nirvana with nary a Chain Matrix or Veyo in sight.
Whether this will see off the cost and anxiety of buying or selling a home remains to be seen. In this particular Groundhog Day, some things have moved on since 2005: for me personally, experience with a conveyance from hell taught me to be more appreciative of solicitors' professional expertise. That doesn't mean digitising isn't worth doing - frankly, it is long overdue - but let's be realistic about its benefits.
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