Symposium on Innovative Technologies for Land Administration
24 - 25 June 2005, Madison (WI), USA
This symposium, held at the University of Wisconsin, has been organised
by FIG Commission 7 on Cadastre and Land Management.
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University of Wisconsin, State Historical Society, Madison, venue of the
Symposium |
Land Administration includes processes of land registration,
cadastre, valuation and land inventory. Every country in the world
pursues these activities in one form or another. Whatever the stage of
development is, technology plays a role in executing these tasks.
Developing countries are challenged by pro poor land management and
administration, and aim at enhancing the services of the authorities as
soon as possible. These countries are worried how to organise the
provision of relevant land information as support of their governance.
Traditional approaches to land administration result in design and
implementation projects that take a long time, even such that land laws
are adapted in order to provide for more simple procedures.
Unconventional approaches are urgently needed, both from a conceptual
and technological point of view. Technology plays an important role,
although its success depends on the link with society's needs. In
particular technology is a major facilitating factor for speeding up
processes. Countries in a further stage of development enjoyed benefits
of IT-application at an earlier stage. Many of them now face the renewal
of their IT architecture because their existing information systems
cannot cope with evolving customer demands and IT opportunities. |
The Symposium
About 60 experts in ICT, Land Administration, Surveying representing the
Geo-ICT industry and Land Administration organisations participated. The
relevance of the alignment between the business of Land Administration and
ICT on strategic and operational level and the, often underestimated, impact
on organisations was underlined. The Land Management Paradigm was introduced
and discussed. An impressive introduction on reconstruction Land
Administration in post conflict conditions and the role, (non-)acceptance
and implementation of information technology in this was given.
Leading industries as Oracle, ESRI, Intergraph, Bentley, CARIS and Leica
gave their view on the further developments in data acquisition, processing
and dissemination related to land administration. There was a lot of
attention to 3D data processing and 3D Cadastres, GPS based data collection,
with very nice examples from Seiler Industries, distributed data management
in an open environment. Intergraph gave its view on simplifying the business
of land administration. DataGrid International had a very impressive
contribution on Strategies and technologies for integrated land
administration and management of national resources. Focus in this
presentation was on developing countries with easy to learn and efficient
technologies for data collection. International Land Systems, gave a view on
using ICT to drive business processes change with land registry offices.
Representatives from the Open Geo-Spatial Consortium and the US Federal
Geographic Data Committee highlighted that standards enhance the data and
that spatial data infrastructures should be developed internationally. The
importance of standardisation of the Cadastral Domain was item of
discussion. A remark in relation to this was that the discussion on a deed
based or title based system should stop and that the focus should be on well
performing land administration systems, and in many countries organisations
failed in this, because of both institutional and managerial reasons.
Conclusions
According to the chair of the Commission 7, Paul van der Molen,
the outcome of the symposium are to be used to further develop an opinion on
the role and importance of ICT in land administration to the World bank, the
United Nations, governments and professionals. land administration is not an
end in itself, it serves society, whether it is poverty reduction , pro poor
land management or 3D legal volumes and their registration. From that point
of view all land administration organisations face similar challenges. Land
administration should be less bureaucratic, simple, cheaper and more
transparent according to many global reports. During the symposium it became
clear that these goals are hard to achieve if one doesn’t take the support
of ICT as a prerequisite. The World Bank, an important funding organisation
of land administration in many countries, and other international
organisations see low cost approaches sometimes as in conflict with ICT. The
Commission feels there might be a need to redefine the role and importance
of technology in realising the world's objectives. What came out of
presentations, is that most probably low cost approaches require high
technology. One further consideration is the awareness of land
administrators of strategic management. Many leaders of land administration
organisation are kept away from strategic issues and are too busy with daily
problems they experience in service delivery. However, leadership is
necessary to develop the future, in accordance with clearly set requirements
by their governments. If they don’t do this well, replacements is an option
as usual in private business life. A specific example related has been
discussed during the symposium.
Paul van der Molen & Christiaan Lemmen
FIG Commission 7 |
