Experts: Digitising land records requires Sh10b

It will cost the government some Sh10 billion to automate land management systems according to the Land Development & Governance Institute (LDGI).

Speaking on Wednesday during a media breakfast in Nairobi while releasing a survey dubbed ‘Status of service delivery in the land sector’, LDGI Executive Director Mwenda Makathimo said the Sh10 billion is enough to procure software, hardware and hire staff.

“The Sh10 billion will be enough to digitise the processes, which have for long relied on paper-based systems that have resulted into delays in accessing land records,” said Mwenda. He said transaction turnaround time is the main problem affecting service seekers.

According to a face-to-face survey carried by the institute between September 16 and October 2 2015 on 913 respondents (30 per cent female and the rest male) in 29 land offices across the country, 69 per cent of the respondents said the process is too slow.

Only 17 respondents said the system is fair, while a paltry 13 per cent said the system is timely. The survey says 63 per cent of the respondents interviewed were not aware of the online land search system that was introduced for the Nairobi registry.

“This is because many of the customers are not allowed to go to the National Titling Center that was recently set up hence many continue to use the manual one where scanning of documents or records is commonly used,” added Mwenda, who regretted that land title search now takes even two weeks but one to two days if you use a broker.

“Were it that the system is digitised just as like banks do, it would take you at least a minute,” noted Mwenda.

The survey, which sought to rank different aspects of service delivery in various lands offices across the country, seek recommendations from the public on how to improve different processes carried out at Lands offices and to identify possible areas of improvement of service delivery in the sector.