National land information infrastructure through a collaborative framework

Abstract

Australia is being faced with issues which demand a national focus. These issues include natural resource management, land markets, trading in commodities such as water and carbon, and the development of national policies for housing and infrastructure. Businesses also are demanding a more national approach as an increasing number of businesses now operate nationally. This is reflected in the Australian Bureau of Statistics figures which show the number of businesses operating in all states and territories increased by 70% between 2003 and 2007.

Over the past several years considerable effort has been directed by the Australian Government towards the development of a “seamless economy” to improve productivity across its federated system of government. In this environment, Land administration in Australia is also jurisdictionally based with no national infrastructure capable of delivering the land information necessary to meet Australia’s needs. In the past, this jurisdictional based approach to land administration has satisfactorily served Australia in an environment where the vast amount of service delivery by both business and government was state focused. Each jurisdiction has taken advantage of the ongoing technological developments to enhance their respective systems and it would appear that many of the needs at a jurisdictional level continue to be met.

Whilst land administration has not featured specifically in this reform several of the nominated projects involved land in some form. To respond to the national drivers, this paper aims to introduce a collaborative framework for the implementation of a national land administration infrastructure which relies on the state and territory based systems as its primary source of information.