The Malaysian government’s vision of becoming a developed nation by 2020 encompasses the realization of an efficient public delivery system at various levels. Among the national emphasis are land related matters which include cadastral survey. Towards this end, in its push towards a fully digital Malaysia by the year 2015, the Government has approved what is now known as the eCadastre project, to be implemented by the Department of Survey and Mapping Malaysia (DSMM). This is by far the largest Information Technology project approved under the 9^th Malaysian Development Plan, which span over a five year period from 2006 till 2010.

Since 1995 DSMM has embarked on a modernization program that saw the dramatic computerization of both its office and field processes of its cadastral survey division. The Digital Cadastral Database (DCDB), which is the crown jewel of the department, was created by capturing the survey accurate information of all land parcels. Under the eCadastre project, a comprehensive nationwide readjustment of the meshwork of parcels would be carried out based on a new geocentric datum. A dense network of global positioning system (GPS) RTK permanent stations has been established to provide on-the-fly precise geocentric positioning. Upon the successful implementation of eCadastre, DSMM has envisaged a significant reduction of time taken in any cadastral survey process from the existing average of 2 years to within 2 months.

The current system of cadastral survey is unable to capitalize on the advent of satellite based technology. A complete revamp of the system is required before any improvement to the delivery system could be achieved. The new environment will allow various cadastral survey processes such as planning, design layout submission, field data capturing, completed job submission, quality control, and approval to be carried out remotely via the mobile telecommunication network. Global positioning system will provide real time positioning at centimeter resolution homogenously to the entire country and coordinates will replace relative measurements as the ultimate prove of boundary mark position. Additional features such as building footprint and space images will be incorporated into the new database in a move towards a multi-purpose cadastral. This new database will also be the launching pad to enable final title to be issued within a day.