Lands Commission to go Digital

The Lands Commission is set to join government’s digitisation agenda by migrating all manual data unto a digital platform as part of measures to reduce turnaround time and speed up processing of applications.

The current manual system at the commission has been blamed for the delay in processing documents for clients, thereby frustrating the work of surveyors. But the commission says this would soon be a thing of the past as it is set to infuse technology into its operation.

Deputy Executive Secretary, Corporate Services at the Lands Commission, Jones Ofori Boadu made this known during a mid-year review workshop for the Survey and Mapping Division of the Lands Commission in Sunyani in the Brong Ahafo Region.

He said: “What we’re trying to do is that as you’re aware, currently, the Lands Commission has data in a manual state and that is what causes delays in the processing of applications when it comes to us.

“Now what we want to do is to migrate all manual data into the digital environment. If we have data in a digital environment, archival and retrieval of data becomes very easy because at the click of a button you can have every record that you need to process the application. So, that is the direction we want to go to make sure that we have all the manual data in a digital environment, so, we can be able to retrieve them quickly so we can process applications faster.”

According to him, the commission has developed a software called the Ghana Enterprise Land Information System to help the commission go digital.

“That software has eight models and one of the models is the web portal model and once the web portal model is up and running, applicants will be able to get onto our websites and be able to upload request for services from Lands Commission,” he explained.

Vice-President Dr Mahamudu Bawumia earlier in the year, after a visit to the commission, reassured Ghanaians that the Akufo-Addo government will take the digitisation of lands seriously.

He described the bottlenecks associated with land registration in the country as a major problem which needed to be addressed within the shortest period.