From low-cost to open source : choices and challenges for the Cambodian land registration system
Pieper Espada, Gertrude
From the start, the development of the Cambodian land registration system has sought to apply low-cost technology to a maximum of functionality. In a country where a large part of the population lives on less than a dollar per day, spending public money on state-of-the-art IT systems can hardly be justified. Using inexpensive software and locally developed interfaces, the land registration system of the Land Management and Administration Project (LMAP) has facilitated the systematic registration of over 1 million land parcels in five years. However, as data volumes and demands for data sharing increase, LMAP must look ahead and modernize its system to meet future requirements. Open source software products, available at no cost, provide a good alternative to proprietary software, especially in poor countries like Cambodia. The amounts of money that are saved on software license fees can be channeled towards development and maintenance, thus towards building a system that is better adapted to local requirements. This paper looks at the development of the Cambodian land registration system under Component 3 Land Titling Program and Development of a Modern land Registration System of the LMAP project, supported by the government of Finland, and the role that open source software can play.
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