Land administration systems (LAS) provide a country’s infrastructure for implementation of its land-related policies and land management strategies. Land in modern administration includes resources, the marine environment, buildings, and all things attached to and under the surface. Each country has its own system, but the focus of this paper is about how to organise successful systems and improve existing systems.
This exploration of LAS provides an integrated framework to aid decision makers to make choices about improvement of systems. The story is based on the organised systems used throughout modern western economies where the latest technologies are available, but it is also applicable to developing countries that struggle to build even rudimentary systems.
The improvement of integrated land administration involves using four basic ingredients in the design of any national approach:
• the land management paradigm,
with its four core administration
functions of land tenure, land use,
land valuation and land development,
• common processes found
in every system,
• a toolbox approach, offering tools
and implementation options, and
• a role for land administration in
supporting sustainable development.

The land management paradigm is theoretical and universal in application, in that it can be used by any organisation, especially national governments, to design, construct and monitor their LAS. The core idea behind the paradigm involves moving land administration beyond its familiar functions of mapping, cadastral surveying, and registering land.
To achieve sustainable development these familiar functions need to be approached holistically and strategically integrated to deliver, or assist delivery of, the four functions in the paradigm (land tenure, value, use, and development). If the organizations and institutions performing these four functions are multi-purpose, flexible, and robust, they are capable of assisting the larger tasks of managing land, and dealing with global land and resource issues. The paradigm drives adaptability and flexibility of land administration, both in theory and in practice, and encourages developed countries to aim for good governance, eDemocracy and knowledge management, and developing countries to implement food and land security, and poverty reduction, while improving their governance, and, in many cases, building effective land markets.
While the theoretical framework offered by the land management paradigm is universal, particular implementation paths must vary, depending on local, regional and national situations. This enigma of open-ended opportunities for implementation is solved by applying an engineering approach (design, build and manage) that relates design of a LAS to management of local practices and processes. These common processes are found in all countries and include dividing up land, allocating it to identifiable and secure uses, distributing areas to people, tracking social changes such as death and inheritance, and so on. Variations in how these processes are undertaken underlie the remarkable variety of existing LAS.
Among all the variations, market based approaches predominate, both in theory and practice. Their popularity arises from their relative success in managing these common processes and, at the same time, improving governance, transparency, and economic wealth for the countries where they are successfully used. Market based approaches thus provide best practice models for improvement of many national LAS where governments seek similar economic results. The tools used in market based systems are therefore frequently related to general economic improvement. This relationship is, however, far from self evident. Market based approaches are creatures of their history and cultural sources. Transferring them to other situations is difficult and a long term process that requires forethought, planning, and negotiation.
This leads to the third ingredient of good LAS design: the toolbox approach. The land administration toolbox for any particular country contains a variety of tools and options to implement them. The tools and their implementation reflect the capacity and history of the country. The selection of tools reflects the historical focus of land administration theory and practice in cadastral and registration activities, and includes, among others: general tools such as land policies, land markets and legal infrastructures; specialist tools such as tenure, registration systems, cadastral surveying and mapping and land boundaries; and emerging tools such as pro-poor land management and gender equity.
There are of course many other tools. Valuation, planning and development tools raise separate and distinct issues. Many countries include land use planning and valuation activities in their formal LAS. Other countries rely on separate institutions and professions to perform these functions and define their LAS more narrowly. For all LAS, however, these functions need to be undertaken in the context of the land management paradigm and integrated with the tenure function. The design of a tool by an agency engaged in any of the four functions therefore needs to reflect its integration with the others.
The cadastre remains a most important tool, because it is capable of supporting all functions in the land management paradigm. Indeed, any LAS designed to support sustainable development will make the cadastre its most important tool.
The list of tools and their design will change over time, and so will the suitability of any particular tool for national LAS, and the options appropriate to deliver it. To successfully use the tool box approach, the LAS designer must understand the local situation, diagnose the next steps for improvement, and select appropriate tools and options from the possible array. Usually the steps can be clarified by international best practices explained in well-documented case studies, United Nations and World Bank reports and publications, and a wide variety of books, journal articles and reports.
One of the major problems with LAS design, even in countries with successful systems, is the isolation of components from each other. This is known generally as the problem of “silos”. Another problem is reliance on single tool solutions in complex situations. The toolbox approach addresses both these problems. It requires that each tool be considered in the context of all the others, and tested against the over-all land management paradigm. It relies on using methods and options appropriate to a situation, compared with a “one size fits all” suite of policy and technical options.

Figure 1: The land management paradigm (Enemark and others 2005)

The options now available vary widely. Land identification systems, registration systems, digital support systems, tenures, surveying and mapping systems, and so on, are both variable and increasingly adaptable. Indeed, no LAS is static. The tools used are always being adapted to reflect changes to the ways people think about and use their land, and many other influences. These changes feed back into the overall design of the LAS and its capacity to inform land policy at large.
The essential theme of this paper is to inform the design of any particular LAS by starting with the broad context of the land management paradigm, observing the common processes that are actually used, then choosing options for each of the tools to manage these processes according to a well grounded understanding of what is appropriate for local circumstances and international best practice.