Land administration, information technology and society

Abstract

Land administration reforms into the future are likely to be influenced by:

• Society's changing priorities

• Globalization

• Information technology revolution

The latter is an important tool in delivering land information systems that support society's changing needs. However, technology also has the potential to dominate rather than serve society. The challenge will be to harness the information revolution to support land administration reform that addresses society's needs.

This paper outlines the evolution of the humankind to land relationship with a view to demonstrating the changes in society that highlight user-needs for information technology. The paper will address this issue in two parts:

First, whilst the economic imperatives have and always will drive reforms to land administration systems, western society in particular is experiencing a phenomenon of measures to formally temper those economic imperatives with concern for sustainable development, the environment and social justice.

Second, information technology has the potential to greatly assist those processes. From society's perspective, what are the existing capabilities of and concerns about this technology? How do these fit with land administration trends for the future?