Pilot Implementation of SOLA
The SOLA project will be piloted in three FAO member countries: Ghana, Nepal and Samoa. Fully functional IT-solutions for selected modules of the SOLA software will be customised to meet local cadastre and registration laws and practices before the pilot implementation of SOLA in those countries. In addition local software developers will be recruited and trained so that they can undertake the required customisation of SOLA, support the pilot implementations and maintain the software. These local software development teams are expected to become key members of the SOLA user and developer community.
Samoa
Although over 80% of land in Samoa is held in customary ownership and is outside of the title registration system, the transactions affecting the remaining 20% (freehold and government) of the land are sufficient to warrant two separate computerised systems dealing with title registration and the associated cadastral mapping. The Samoan society is also vigorously discussing how to balance protecting Samoan way of life with using customary tenure to provide more economic benefits. The existing computerised systems are based on commercial software and are dependent on overseas software support.
SOLA intends to assist Samoa in moving into more sustainable computerised systems that integrate title registration and cadastral mapping functions and in building up up software support skills within Samoa.
Nepal
In Nepal, land registration and cadastral services are provided to citizens through over 75 district offices. The recent political instability has heightened the need for land reform and improved land administration service. Although computerised systems have been developed, these are based on propriety software and the district offices of both the Department of Land Reform and Management and the Department of Survey operate primarily on paper based systems. The physical condition of these paper based records is deteriorating and the condition of the offices in many districts is very primitive. Power and communication links with the district offices are very tentative.
SOLA intends to provide an opportunity to move to a more integrated operation of the land related departments at the district level. The new open source system aims to provide support for a more comprehensive range of district office functions, to safeguard the archives of land related records and to run on a hardware platform that provides a continuous service regardless of interruptions in the mains power supply.
Ghana
80% of land in Ghana is held in customary ownership and title registration has been introduced in Greater Accra and parts of Kumasi region. The remaining 8 regions have a deeds registration system. There are computerised systems based on proprietary software and located in the headquarters and Greater Accra offices of the land sector agencies. However, many of these systems are stand-alone systems operating on very old hardware and networking is limited to building based local area networks.
Over the last five years, the Land Administration project has supported the development of stage 1 of the Ghana Land Information System (LIS). The Ghana LIS is designed to support the new integrated business processes of the newly established Land Commission which brought together land sector agencies within a single organization. The Land Administration Project also made a start on creating a digital archive of registration records.
SOLA intends to provide an opportunity to increase the functionality of the Ghana LIS and support further land sector agency business processes. It will link the existing separate LIS databases, allow a central database to be created and provide for a more efficient data management regime. The Ghana LIS must also be customised for operation in all the regional offices outside of Accra.
