Registration and Cadastre in the National Transaction System context

TRANSLATION NOTES: Please read some comments at the end of this post.

Every day countries focus on e-Government trends, where processes are simplified in search of a better service provision to citizens, as well as to decrease margins for corruption or unnecessary bureaucracy.

We are aware that legislation, institutions and processes in property’s matter in each country are different. However, the rules that provide the basis for substantive law are due to registry principles which seek the same goal: ensure legal certainty.

The Land Administration Domain Model (LADM) represents one of the most precious achievements in regulations for lands administration; if we remember that when the 2014 Cadastre model was considered, it was just a poetic but very visionary aspiration. A stunning standard’s gain is the ability to homogenize the semantics for objects’ handling, so that the Property Registration System can be attached to State level initiatives who seek the consolidation of transactional environments focused on a territorial vision.

I know that it may seem a legal aberration and even deluded, depending on the institutions perspective in each country. However, the focus of this article is the possibility that Registry and Cadastre, outside of being an island, may (their data, not them), add to the transactional process data infrastructure.

It is understood that while the spirit of this article is technological, LADM is so noble that it allows to adapt to legislation and institutional framework of each country, without forgetting that the reengineering is not left.

The core of common data

The chart at the end of the article shows how the LADM main components may constitute a core on which different processes interact, linking the Property Rights System elements, not only applicable to property estate, but also movable property. To the Center are shown the registration action main elements:

• The registration object, which may well be a plot, a vehicle or a ship, with or without Cadastre GeoReference, under personal folio technique or Royal Folio.
• Stakeholders; natural or legal persons as well as informal groupings. All those involved in the transactional process chain.
• Legal and administrative assessments; law relations, restriction or responsibility that affect the use, domain or occupation of the property
• The right between the object and the interested parties, registered or de facto. In the standard even the right is identified as a legal assessment plus.

While they are not the only elements, these are the ones that focus the actors’ actions associated with the transaction: the Bank, the notary, the surveyor, the mapping technician, which are no more than other stakeholders with different roles.

How can they be called and modeled? ISO: 19152

The processes’ integration possibility under a core platform

The fact is that these same elements are contained in a country different processes: they are the same people that the people’s official registry handle for electoral purposes, and the same appearing performing tax formalities, business operation permits, procedures for construction, passports issuance, etc.

Of course it is not easy to establish public policies to standardize this. Just as an example, the praying bondage requiring the Registrar to use the name just as it was created by the notary. So even at the people’s database a person is registered as María Albertina Pereira Gómez, but the notary put Maria Albertina Pereira de Mendoza, this creates another person, if the system does not have a procedure for consolidation or alias management.

They are the same goods on which tax burdens fall, that contain permissions that acquire use restrictions, etc.

So in a country that promotes a central transactional platform, the case of Land Registry and Cadastre are only one more user within their registration and legalization roles. Other institutions act in their roles as Risk Management, Territorial Ordinance, Planning, Fundraising, Socio-economic Development, Infrastructure, etc.

Outside of being an island, the Land Registry becomes an important piece in the puzzle of transactional processes. No matter where the process starts, whether with the notary, in the Bank, the municipality or the responsible entity for issuing title, the Registration + Cadastre joined to the ideal setting:

If an institution plans a bridge construction, the registry provides information concerning the public or private real property indicating where it will be located; this object at level design receives an identifier in the infrastructure system using the Cartographic Registry information containing the digital terrain model, its geological characteristics and context of use. The same object is identified in the public investment system for the budgetary provision; and once built, is recorded a 500 m buffer, this affects the immediate plots and indicates regulations for the construction on private grounds entries and also on the river’s downstream region with a prohibition for the permits issuance of aggregates’ extraction. Finally, once the work finishes, is delivered under concession to the municipality so as to undertake a periodic maintenance cycle.

But all data, enter to a records system that share common data. The Registry/Cadastre only exhibited a locator service, but in return received regulations that affect the adjacent properties.

Thus, each institution assumes its role in their expertise level, achieving both efficiency in service and the development’s promotion that is, at the end, what counts for general interest, if we take into account that decreasing costs and transaction times is the only element that depends on the Government in different factors associated with development such as technology and other resources.

Clarifying that this does not change the roles, powers and principles pursued by the land registry. Rather, it is to standardize a Unified Registry System, where Cadastre, being one more log, will be the spatial_unit linked to enrolment in the Royal Folio. As it is a record plus territorial ordinance, like the vehicles registry, ship owner, etc.

Services-based architectures

It is clear, that reach these levels requires a broad country view, although that is not strange even in developing countries. Every day more professionals are in charge of public institutions and they arrive with the potential to form multidisciplinary teams to see the public administration with an optical analog to large companies where they come from. This is an adaptation case that models had, showing a municipality as a modular tissue where there is production, logistics, distribution, inventory, shipping, invoices and accounting; despite that size and regulatory powers change. This is why traditional systems for the ERP type municipalities have been so successful.

But a system like the one we’re talking about, cannot suppose that will work with client/server schemas and desktop development. Rather for this is required the application of multilayer architectures with service orientation, where the layers presentation development are separated from the business logic, and controlled by processing motors in languages such as Business Process Modeling and Notation (BPMN 2.0). In this way, simple processes like the a mortgage constitution, or complex ones as an estate individualization, may be decomposed in oriented tasks services, to entities, utilities, such that it is not necessary to develop each service separately but rather to organize them into generic functions.

Services-based architectures facilitate life and maintenance of large systems, while keeping users doing tasks in what they are specialists. No matter where they are, the GIS technicians do a topological operation that dismembers a building, inheriting rights on a Royal Folio registration which is not separated from its geometry. So, incorporating schemas as Front-Back Office are not difficult scenarios, because the system is not what is important; what matters only is to attach the presentation window to a service where the customer area is separate from the processing zone.

The LADM using advantages

The simpler, comes from a statement of 20 years ago:

Long life to modeling!

Therefore, one of the new surveyors’ and geomatics professionals’ urgent challenges, is to learn to understand models. A standard allows you to homogenize the semantics for a highly specialized aspect, where is only necessary to tell the developer company: apply the ISO: 19152. Hopefully it were so simple, but it is much easier to wait for others to come to tell how the property system should work when our notaries and cadasters are the specialists.

Because of the joke (*)…

It’s an interesting challenge of the inspiration’s table to which I have returned and from which I share this summary for the sake of the knowledge democratization that today is irreversible. We are aware that the excitement caused by the technology should be patient because of the institutional role’s complexity, without which it will not be possible bring it to reality.

At the end of the day, the article sounds like science fiction – today-. But in the example of the country I’m talking about, that same was said 11 years ago, when the new property law had to be written with the creation of an institution that included in the same command line the Cadastre, Registration and the National Geographic Institute. Institutions with different purposes – yes – because they grew up disparate; but just go to see good neighbor practices and smoke a good inspiration cigar to see where things are walking. Mostly because we don’t know when we will have those five minutes of opportunity to act.

Institutional models evolve slowly, technology pressure can never be at that rate. For this reason, standards make that balance point. In 8 years the technological lag always gives the reason, although institutional backwardness takes nearly 30 years to be noted.

TRANSLATION NOTES:

(*) “Coña” is a jargon word especially used in Spain. It means joke, derision.