This initiative has provided for necessary enhancements to the Victorian Water Register. The unbundling of entitlements and the development of the Water Register have produced significant benefits to water users, government and the environment.
Development of the Water Register has resulted in benefits to market participants from improved confidence, flexibility and certainty for investment in the long term and trading decisions in the short term, allowing irrigators to trade water entitlements and allocations rapidly and with confidence.The Water Register records all water-related entitlements (over 80,000 entitlements, mostly water shares and take-and-use licences, and 100,000 associated licences). This initiative has facilitated enhancements to the Register which are needed to provide benefits to irrigators, environmental users and other Register users.
Total EC3 investment: $4.64 m
2012-13 expenditure: $0.600 m
2013-14 expenditure: $0.943 m
2014-15 expenditure: $1.672 m
2015-16 expenditure: $1.122 m
2016-17 expenditure: $0.301 m
Progress
A significant number of enhancements to the Victorian Water Register were delivered as a result of this EC3 funding. Some of the most significant are outlined below.
In November 2013, a facility for online allocation trades was launched. There are about 10,000 allocation trades per year on average, with around 75 per cent now made online, providing savings to rural water users of around $900,000 since it launched. It now costs just $42.20 to trade allocations this way, and customers get instant approval in most cases rather than having to wait up to a week to have trades approved.
For customers selling land and water together, a single form can now be generated and pre-filled that clearly sets out all the water assets to be transferred. This has replaced a whole suite of forms and greatly increased customer confidence and satisfaction.
This initiative also funded a dynamic data sharing interface with the Victorian Office of Titles that has improved the integration of land data with water entitlement data in the Water Register.
All unbundled entitlements and 93 per cent of bundled entitlements are now authoritative records in the Water Register – exceeding the set target. This was achieved with initiative funding and now kept up to date with land transfers through the data sharing interface.
Improvements to data integrity and streamlined user interfaces have also made applications easier to process, saving time and money for water corporations and freeing up customer service staff for more value added tasks.
In June 2015, a new service was launched that allows farmers, drillers and consultants to apply online for bore construction licences. There has been a very rapid uptake of this service with 94 per cent of bore construction licences now submitted online. The online service has already delivered large savings to customers of more than $500,000 and significant productivity benefits at the water corporations. The service integrates with VicMap technology to provide a user-friendly way for customers to specify the drilling location.
In 2016 and 2017, new functionality was developed to improve how information is managed and stored to support the accounting, monitoring and reporting of whole of resource information. This will provide a platform for future improvements to public information such as online reporting of the Victorian Water Accounts.
Page last updated: 24/05/19