News in 2013
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UN-Habitat Expert Group Meeting
Modernising Land Agencies Budgetary Approach: Costing and Financing of Land Administration Services in Developing
Countries
Gävle, Sweden, 14 - 15, October 2013
A second Expert Group Meeting (EGM) hosted by Lantmäteriet at its
premises in Gävle, Sweden on 14-15 October 2013 was originally convened to
validate the tool, however the process to get to tool development has taken
longer than planned and the workshop was used to further validate the process, the scope and the key elements of tools. Tool validation and
piloting will occur after the tool has been developed and delivered to
Global Land Tool Network (GLTN). The EGM included 20 participants,
representatives from Lantmateriet (Sweden), Kadaster International and
University of Twente/ITC (The Netherlands), Danish Geodata (Denmark),
Statkart (Norway), GIZ, University of Florida, independent consultant,
Albanian Property Registry and Lesotho Land Authority, GLTN CoFLAS Activity
Consultant, Land Equity International (Australia), Global Land Tool Network
and FIG. It must be noted that participation on this initiative extends also
to contributors from Georgia, New Zealand, Peru, and Thailand.
![](http://m.fig.net/news/archive/news_2013/coflas_gavle_600.jpg) Participants at the 2nd UN-Habitat Expert Group Meeting, photo by Peter
Wasström
The Costing and Financing of Land Administration Services Initiative
The 1st objective of the project is to develop a useful and practical
tool whereby the costing and financing of land administration services in developing countries can be
reformed and modernized with a view to enabling the agencies provide cost effective, efficient,
sustainable and affordable services. The methodology, where appropriate and through incremental
process, ought to lead to some kind of cost recovery, but without compromising quality of services
provided and limiting access to services especially of the poor and vulnerable.
The 2nd objective of the CoFLAS project is to organize and lead a process
of peer reviewing and validation of the tool through an expert group meeting (EGM) to be jointly
organized by the GLTN and the International Federation of Surveyors (FIG). The goal of the
workshop in Sweden was update all stakeholders on the status of the CoFLAS tool development exercise and to
get further expert guidance on the way forward.
GLTN and UN-Habitat are moving to country level work and this requires
robust technical resources with hands-on country experience and innovative tools like CoFLAS to
facilitate discussions.
In regard to methodology, we are pursuing a two-pronged approach: 1. Documenting the experience of developing countries as a basis to develop
the tool 2. Learning from the experience of developed countries to facilitate
knowledge transfer by documenting and sharing relevant and good practices.
Trends and Key Comments from Country Presentations
There was not a clear definition of what represents a transaction and
therefore the reporting on number of transactions which was then used to infer a cost per transaction
indicator was distorted in some cases. New Zealand reported more than 13 million transactions with a
population of over 4.3 million, while Denmark reported only 2 million transactions for a population
of 5.5 million. This needs to be further refined and clarified before lessons and conclusions can
be made. For example, is supplying information a ‘transaction’ or is it only transfers, mortgage
discharges etc.
There was a question on whether future costs for operating and future
investment in technologies could also be captured, and this will be considered in the tool development. There was a need to also clarify what is considered a land administration
servicing office, because there are complex arrangements for how these can be established and what
sort of access points at various levels are considered part of the costing and financing. Municipal
level and one-stop-shop access points also provide land administration services. Some offices
provide full registration services, while a secondary service may only be providing registration
information. Based on the presentations it would appear that it is only possible to start
costing a system once it is digitised. How then can we support countries that are manual and incomplete?
This re-iterates the need to obtain information from Thailand that is a complete and manual
system that has been successfully reformed over a long period.
Methodology and Tool Development
The status of the study was summarised:
- Desk review – inception report, completed
- Rotterdam EGM - refined scope, refined questionnaire, pilot
countries selected, completed (read
report)
- Questionnaire Pilots in EU - Denmark, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden,
completed
- Questionnaire refined – land use planning removed
- Case Study Questionnaire - Albania, Georgia, Lesotho, completed
- Also added New Zealand, completed
- Peru and Thailand ongoing
- Initial data analysed, feedback requested and responded
- Preliminary tool proposed, completed
- Gävle EGM – confirms questionnaire findings, refine tool, and
discuss constraints
Discussion on clarifying what CoFLAS is aiming at
CoFLAS must be able to propose costed strategies of approximately 4 key
technical processes for land administration intervention strategies that would be adopted by a
developing country. This tool will need to be able to provide cost elements on the archetypical
interventions of pro-poor (low cost and incremental approaches) as well as describing risk elements, some
intervention options:
1. Undertaking first registration or completing 2. Establishing a land registration system 3. Establishing an LIS 4. Computerisation / digitization (Armenia example, US$1
million) 5. Creating spatial frameworks / establishing a cadastre 6. Institutional strengthening and capacity building 7. Post disaster (study does not have to consider this) 8. Upgrading or improving geodetic framework
Key to the technical options, is also ensuring there is strong management,
leadership and political will - as has been frequently identified this can
be the tipping point in a project. Furthermore, knowledge, skills and
attitude are critical for considering how this tool can be best implemented
and used.
Conclusions
There were some key concluding statements made by participants.
- The workshop has shown the need for the tool to draw out generic
elements from the
mechanical process.
- Setting out the questions about what the tool is going to address is
very important for sharpening the tool. This should be used to lead in
to introducing the tool, i.e. need to clearly outline the conceptual
framework.
- Questionnaires may require in-country facilitation.
- It is going to be important that participants from this meeting
maintain contact so that we can continue to have similar engagement and
response as the tool is developed further.
Remarks
We are at a moment of opportunity to do something. We are a diverse
group, with unique contributions to the process based on all our experiences. We shouldn’t be
daunted by the challenge or allow the complexity to paralyse us. We must
strive for simplicity. This initiative we are embarking on is crucial, we
know it is needed but we do not want to have any mistakes along the way
because the consequences would be huge. All the GLTN partners, particularly
those from GLTN Professional and International Training and Research Cluster
were thanked for their continuing support and contributions. The
collaboration is greatly appreciated. by Teo CheeHai, FIG President
Thanked all the attendees for the very open participation. Lantmäteriet
were happy to be hosting the event and continuing to be active partners. Mr Kjellson looks forward to
the tool production. by Bengt Kjellson, Lantmäteriet, Host Agency, Sweden
Developed countries may skew the model. Need more volunteers from
developing countries to make sure model picks up variables and be a more
robust tool. Conceptual framework needs to be revised to reflect more than
just a cost cantered approach and also to be less comparative between
countries. The tool needs to focus more on cost elements, typology,
prioritisation and then also more than operating cost, with some discussion
on development costs. by Clarissa Augustinus, UNHabitat
There is more work to be done in the future on developing the business
case, and the ‘elevator pitch’. It is most likely that the piloting will take place in DRC for the
CoFLAS tool. Validation is to be review process, and this tool must be
validated along this interpretation. The aim is to present at the 2014 FIG
Congress, it may still however be in developmental stage. Investments from
other countries has helped GLTN/FIG get to this point, and further
investments for 3 years will provide some future.
10 Dec. 2013
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