Capacity Building for Cadastral Survey and Land Registration

Six year project

£0.5 million

Asian Development Bank/ Government of Mongolia

60 staff months of expertise in project management; land information systems; GIS; land management and valuation; land legislation; training; awareness-raising and IT.

Within the context of the Mongolian land reform programme, the National Land Information System (NLIS) was seen as the linchpin to providing security of tenure to citizens and catalysing a vibrant land and property market, thereby bolstering revenue generation from land fees and taxes and generally vitalising the Mongolian economy. This in a society that has virtually no history of land or property ownership, half the population living as nomadic herders with the other half living in the Soviet-style Ulaanbaatar with everything, until very recently, state-owned. This heritage, together with the massive social and economic changes that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union, has left the country in need of modernising its entire land sector – a resource that it has in abundance.

The technical assistance was designed to achieve three principal outputs that would enable the newly established Executing Agency (EA) to enhance its capacity to carry out its mandate, namely: (i) technical assistance with mapping and survey and, in particular, the design and implementation of a National Land Information System; (ii) training for EA staff at all levels, including the districts; and (iii) review and rationalisation of the relevant legislation applicable to land management and administration.

The establishment of the Administration of Land Management, Geodesy and Cartography (ALMGC), the EA for this TA assignment, brought together all aspects of the process of land administration within one organisation.  The ALMGC mandate ranged from gathering the essential base information, including aerial photography and cadastral survey, to the handling of this information at all levels of national, regional and local government, and also maximising revenue and cost recovery, on behalf of national government, from land fee payments.

HTSPE and their local partner provided advice on new concepts, procedures and technology that enabled the ALMGC to carry out its mandate, as well as providing specific advice on land administration procedures and appropriate legislation.  Through this support, the EA was better equipped to both let and monitor a turnkey contract to implement an NLIS, in accordance with ADB regulations and procedures, and also to implement aspects of land administration with fully trained staff. Training, workshops, seminars and information dissemination were an important part of the work.

Following successful completion of the project, an important contract extension was awarded to ensure the successful implementation and capacity building of the NLIS to provide for the sustainable functioning of the system.  HTSPE staff were responsible for:

• Review of software requirements specification/acceptance test cases/system design.
• Data migration, giving the opportunity to standardise the information structure, content and cartographic representation and to ensure it conforms to emerging international standards for spatial infrastructures.
• Quality control and capacity building: formulating procedures and protocols for updating topographic maps from satellite imagery and identifying the training needed to enable this task to be carried out.
• Ongoing monitoring of the NLIS development, implementation and deployment.