FAQ

What is SOLA?

SOLA stands for Solutions for Open Land Administration.

How can computerised systems be made more sustainable?

Land administration and cadastral systems play a crucial global role in safeguarding the security of access to land and natural resources. Information technology has become a basic element of these systems everywhere. Introduction of automation to land administration has improved systems’ efficiency, standardisation and accessibility, which in turn have contributed to responsible land governance. Developing country land administrations are, however, often inefficient and poorly structured. This results partly from the lack of adapted and flexible software tools to standardise, structure and maintain the cadastre and the land registration. Open-source software bears a promise of a way forward.

The FAO Open Source Cadastre and Registration Software (SOLA) projectis a 3 year trust fund project,  funded through the Government of Finland which started in June 2010. Its aim is to make computerized cadastre and registration systems more affordable and more sustainable in developing countries. Three countries have been identified for pilot implementations of the software (Ghana, Nepal and Samoa).

The SOLA project will promote affordable IT-systems that enable quick improvements in transparency and equity of governance. The introduction of IT systems to land registration is one of the key ways to reduce corrupt and non-transparent land management practices. In fact, IT improves the structure and accessibility of records, facilitating knowledge based decision making and wider data dissemination.

Why computerise land administration?

Computerised systems in land administration are part of a bundle of appropriate interventions that can advance the goals of improved security of tenure, service delivery and governance. Computerised systems can make a positive difference providing these systems are designed:

• to be sensitive to the customs and laws of the country;
• not to create an unacceptable dependency on staff members with certain skills, organisations or items of equipment;
• to involve elements of best practice that are perceived as culturally neutral; and
• to be sustainable.

Computerised systems are becoming more and more common in developing countries. However, land administration agencies in developing countries with responsibilities for registration and cadastre have largely lagged behind in the introduction of computerised systems. There have been attempts made to introduce computerised systems in land administration agencies to support registration and cadastre processes.

Highly sophisticated systems from a developed country have been implemented in less developed countries in a way that is likening to “copy and paste” action in a word processing software package. Not only is this type of implementation insensitive to the law, customs and practices of the host country, these systems often require a high level of expertise to operate and maintain in countries where skills may be in short supply. In most cases there were also ongoing commercial software licence and software support fees that needed to be paid each year. After the project for the initial implementation was completed even more demands were made on already stretched local budgets to cover further licence fees to be paid as the system was rolled-out to other district offices.

What is Free/ Libre Open Source Software?

Open- source means that, unlike proprietary software, developers have access to software’s “engine”, which can be freely modified and adjusted. Open-source solutions are more flexible and adaptable to local conditions and languages than proprietary software. By using and improving open-source software, cadastre and land registers can build local knowledge and contribute to the public development of open source projects (via for example web communities) that can in turn benefit other cadastres world-wide.

The SOLA projectwill be piloted in three FAO member countries: Ghana, Nepal and Samoa. Fully functional IT- solutions for selected modules of Land Administration will be developed and adapted to local contexts. In addition institutional structures will be strengthened to maintain the software. The experiences acquired during the creation and the implementation of the software will be shared through an online user community.

A fully functional SOLA shell with an active user community, will lower the barriers for developing countries to use IT to improve land registration systems and to enhance tenure security. The experiences of Ghana, Nepal and Samoa will be widely disseminated to encourage other FAO member countries to consider the advantages of open software IT-solutions in the development of their land administration.

What is the way forward?

Software development will begin early in 2011. After the initial generic open source software has been developed by a central team of programmers, software development teams will be established in each of the pilot countries. Their initial task will be to customize the initial software for use in that country. The pilot implementations will then occur and the local software development teams will be responsible for providing software support and enhancing and extending the open course software to cover the needs of these countries more.

By the end of the project (in May 2013) there should be an active user community using, improving and extending cadastre and registration open source software involving countries beyond the initial 3 pilot implementations. To facilitate the growth of this open source user community, the project has formed a relationship with the Tampere University of Technology.

How to contact?

Open Source Cadastre and Registration Software (SOLA) Project

Climate, Energy and Tenure Division (NRC)
Natural Resources Management and Environment Department
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)

Viale delle Terme di Caracalla
00153 Rome
Italy

Email: