Last week the UK's legal IT trade body, the Legal Software Suppliers Association (LSSA), issued the following statement in support of the PISCES initiative (Property Information Systems Common Exchange Standard): 'PISCES members have established an independent non-profit organisation to deliver an industry standard for property-related e-commerce data exchanges. LSSA works closely and collaborates with PISCES on this shared area of interest. LSSA fully supports the PISCES initiative and encourages our members to adopt the standard and to assist PISCES by contributing their industry expertise to the development of the standard.'


Roger de Boehmler, the director- general of PISCES, added: 'Several LSSA members already play a very effective role within PISCES standard development and we look forward to better supporting the association's needs in relation to property-related case management and e-conveyancing data exchanges in the future.'


PISCES is the common data standard that has been developed over the past few years by law firms, property companies and other members of the real estate industry to allow the efficient transfer of data between parties during a property transfer. The focus was initially on the commercial sector but now increasingly it is shifting over to the residential property market and e-conveyancing.


Normally in this column we try to steer away from the under-the-bonnet technical side of information technology and focus on the business issues, so let us put the PISCES/LSSA announcement into its proper context.


One of the inefficiencies of the traditional conveyancing model is there is a huge amount of information to be exchanged between solicitors, local authorities, surveyors, estate agents, mortgage lenders and government agencies, such as the Land Registry.


Although much of it may nowadays be prepared on a computer, once it has been passed to the next party, it has to be re-keyed into another computer by someone else. Apart from being slow and a duplication of effort, there is also the potential for human error to creep in as information is transferred from one system to another.


What PISCES is doing is, firstly, is setting up a system of electronic data interchange, so computers talk directly to other computers. And, secondly, establishing a system of national (and international) standards, so all the players in the conveyancing world comply with the same standards.


In effect, what this essentially private-sector initiative is attempting to do is create a joined-up e-conveyancing environment. This should avoid a repeat of the disruption that was caused last year when the Inland Revenue tried to go it alone with its ill-prepared stamp duty land tax regime, which in IT terms was about as sophisticated as putting a lot of monkeys in front of typewriters and hoping that they would recreate the works of Shakespeare.



Charles Christian is an independent adviser to the Law Society's Software Solutions guide