A national e-conveyancing system that will based in part on the intellectual property underpinning Victoria's existing electronic conveyancing system is to be designed and developed by technology firm Accenture. The company is also in the box seat to provide the cloud computing platform the service will be ultimately be based upon. The planned rollout will start late next year, with the first property transactions tipped to take place from 2013. However, the actual use of the system remains dependent on the passage of enabling legislation in the nation's States and Territories.Called Pexa - Property Exchange Australia - the initial design of the system is expected to take about eight months. NECDL (National E-Conveyancing Development Ltd), the body charged with creating the national e-conveyancing system, signed the deal with Accenture in July, according to CEO Marcus Price.According to Alan Cameron, NECDL chairman: "All parties will now see some concrete development steps in delivering an e-conveyancing system for Australia. The announcements today signal a significant departure from where e-conveyancing has been in the past. "We are looking forward to continuing our dialogue with the key stakeholders in this project: property lawyers, conveyancers, banks, other financial institutions, information brokers, and all State and Territory revenue offices and land titles offices." NECDL also announced that it had bought the intellectual property incorporated in Victoria's e-conveyancing system, as well as other IP from NSW, Queensland and WA, although it did not reveal how much it had paid. (Since the four States are currently NECDL's shareholders it's a case of Peter paying Paul anyway).The Pexa system will allow the electronic preparation and settlement of property transactions prior to lodgement with a land registry. (Land registries are working separately on the interfaces that will allow this.)Price said that Accenture had been selected from a shortlist of three technology vendors. The value of the contract has not been revealed, but it is open-ended, he said.Price said that Pexa would ultimately be offered to the market as a cloud-based service, with the expectation that the cloud contract would be let in 12-18 months. Although there was no guarantee that Accenture will win the contract, he acknowledged the company would be well positioned to bid to supply what will have to be an Australian-located cloud.Erik Fenna, CEO of the financial standards organisation, Lixi, welcomed the progress that had been made, and said that while Lixi would continue to work closely with NECDL it would be "efficient" to forge closer links with Accenture in order to promote the implementation of open messaging standards on the Pexa platform.According to the Australian Bankers Association, Pexa pointed to "major efficiency gains for everyone involved in the conveyancing industry, including the banking sector."The four major banks are still waiting on approval from the ACCC before being allowed to inject seed capital into NECDL and so become minority shareholders in the organisation which is currently jointly owned by the Governments of NSW, Victoria, Queensland and WA.Besides waiting on ACCC approval before it secures a new injection