Digital Cadastres Facilitating Land Information Management

6. Recommendations for Implementation 
The transition from a digital to a paper based to a digital land information requires many 
considerations such as human, technological (hardware, software, peripherals), social and 
organisational factors including change management. This section emphasises the technological 
aspects that require consideration to foster a smoother implementation. A concise description of the 
Zimbabwean cadastral and land transaction system is provided. This is detailed in (Chimhamhiwa, 
2002; Kurwakumire, 2013b) including some of the business processes involved. A schema can be 
developed using these business processes and based on the LADM to ensure similar 
implementations in different organisations but which are interoperable. 
A digital cadastre requires more than just personal computers, but also servers to house the 
databases. More efficient backup has been made possible through the advent of cloud computing 
whereby information and servers can be hosted on the cloud. Personal computers are required as the 
desktop access points to the system within the use of client server technology to enable 
communication with the database. Several Linux systems are freeware such as Ubuntu and there 
exist open source database engines such as postgreSGL. There is also open source GIS software 
such as QGIS and Grass and free spatial data viewers such as UDIG. Pieper-Espada (2010) 
discusses the use of open sources alternatives in developing digital cadastres. The open source 
alternative is suggested in this study as financial constraints are among the major impediments to 
automating cadastral systems in developing nations. On the other hand open source software 
continues to develop and there is increased use and possibilities to migrate to commercial database 
systems in future. Similar work can be done with commercial software and database engines such as 
ArcGIS and Oracle Spatial as they are more established than open source. Municipalities need 
smaller systems which feed information into the digital cadastre maintained by the DSG who is the 
custodian of basic information relating to land (Kurwakumire and Chaminama, 2012) to enable real 
time changes and updates. This makes possible real time sharing of spatial information from various 
cities by other government departments, industry, non-governmental organisations and the public. 
The cadastre is a public listing, in which all land parcels of a country of a defined area are stored 
(Dale and McLaughlin, 1990) so it is a matter of public policy as to whether access to information 
will be freely available or whether there will be a cost and the nature of the information that 
different users can access. 
Several processes are required for full implementation including those shown in Table 1. The 
processed depicted are not exhaustive but give an insight of the work that needs to be done from a 
technical point of view ignoring organisational, social and human resource constraints. 

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South African Journal of Geomatics, Vol. 3, No. 1, January 2014 
72
Table 1. LIS/ Digital Cadastre Process Elements