Abstract
Access to land data is crucial for good land governance. It enhances the development of a transparent land administration system, increasing government accountability and service delivery as well as giving communities and individuals the possibility to take in informed decisions on the management of their land. The changing landscape for the land data ecosystem and land data users highlights the current and future potential of the Cadastral Template (CT) as a key land data resource. CT represents a unique and relevant data set, capturing important descriptive information on land administration systems as well as core qualitative and quantitative data. Land information and land data play a pivotal role in supporting delivery of administration functions for sustainable development. It is critical that core cadastral data is freely and easily available in a manner that enables the data to be re-used and made interoperable. CT is important because it provides an assessment of cadastral data and cadastral systems. This is important for transparency and accountability, to pursue data accuracy, identify data integration opportunities and improve decision making. However, as cadastral data is often integrated with other data (land use and developments, taxation, resource rights and environmental and demographic data), we propose a partnership between like-minded organisations to pursue a common goal of providing improved data ecosystems for a more comprehensive understanding of land governance challenges. The purpose of this paper is therefore to explore the opportunities for partnership with FIG on the CT. The researchers propose to provide a brief overview of the CT and its key characteristics as well as explore opportunities to increase the value, use and uptake of CT data by developing strategic data partnerships that are mutually reinforcing, complementary and help to fully explore the untapped potential of CT data for broader use in analysis by the land and development sectors. This paper is the result of a partnership between the Land Portal Foundation, the University of Otago School of Surveying and Cadasta Foundation to explore potential partnerships to improve the existing information ecosystem and make it richer and more interoperable for efficient land administration and better land governance.