Auditing the land information system 

The Uganda Land Information System (ULIS) is a digital platform developed by the Ministry of Lands to provide comprehensive and up-to-date information on land tenure, land use, land ownership, and land administration in the country. 

ULIS aims to improve access to land-related information for both government agencies and the public, streamline land administration processes, and promote transparency and accountability in the land sector. 

In a commentary in New Vision on December 20, 2023, State minister for Lands Sam Mayanja describes how ULIS has eliminated challenges at registries. 

He avers that before the implementation of the system, the Land Registry Office was characterised by anarchy, which was a direct result of semi-literate land brokers who paid large sums of money to the registry officials to priorities their work, foment forgeries and other dubious transactions and participate in fraud.  

The primary contribution of a government to its citizenry, in regards to land, is the guarantee of the security of their land rights. It is with this in mind that an audit of the functioning of ULIS is prudent, nearly 15 years after its inception.

An attempt at enforcing a unified mapping system was initiated by the district surveyors of Wakiso and Mukono in the early 2000s but this was not followed up by institutional authority.  The efforts, noble as they were, suffered a still birth. It was in this period that ULIS was conceptualised.

It is in seeking to find a solution to this ambiguity that the first errors were made. In scanning the cadastral sheets on which the surveys were mapped, and not following up the scanning with the collection of ground data so as to properly geo-reference the sheets, the coordinates extracted from the mapped plot corners were always going to be inaccurate. 

This was confounded by the fact that, since each individual survey was independent from the other, the errors in the positions of the plots could not be regular (they were residual as opposed to being systematic errors) so no mathematical model could be developed to harmonise the map and the ground data.     

We, therefore, find ourselves in a situation where:

1. The ministerial zonal offices of the Ministry of Lands map land inaccurately, by design, since there is hardly a system of harmonising what the surveyor picks on the ground with the information at the headquarters.

2. There is an inevitable increase in land disputes because of the mismatch that is caused by different data sets.

3. Fraud is on the rise. This is caused by the fact that the data picked and the one mapped vary, hence creating a loop hole that can be exploited.

The situation, before the institution of ULIS was being refined by the known avenues of area amendments and re-surveys, albeit at a snail pace. What had been hoped for was that the system, being interactive, would itself be refined to address these historical errors.  

Unfortunately, the system has made a bad situation worse. We then find ourselves at the same stage at which we started: the need to refine the cadastre. 

As an analogy to feeding a poisoned child with a lot of milk so as to dilute the poison, one of the solutions is to increase the number of licensed surveyors plying the field. Initially looked down upon by senior members of the profession because of the quality of the professional this would produce, it has become pertinent to the survival of what remains of a robust and self-checking system that characterised pre-ULIS.  

This is because, unlike route, hydrographic and building surveys, cadastral surveys are about position fixing. The current regime of surveying instruments alone take care of the accuracy of the position fixed. What is, however, not accounted for is the integrity of the professional.  

In increasing the number of licensed surveyors in the field, the integrity problem is also fixed because you have a critical number of professionals practicing, which increases competition and improves service delivery.

The writer is a surveyor 
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