Our Colombia needs assessment offered us an opportunity to learn how a team with a longstanding Housing, Land, and Property program navigates a country system that has mature institutions and a deep understanding of the value of land titling efforts. Through conversations with government agencies, NGOs, local IOM teams, and displaced community members, we were able to develop a much clearer vision and use-case for LandLedger’s application.
Assessment Goals
- Understand displacement/return context in which formalization and restitution interventions have been implemented, and the successes and failures therein
- Understand the systemic, programmatic, administrative, and technological barriers to a streamlined formalization and restitution process
- Understand how informal information and documentation is valued, and whether titles and existing processes adequately capture/recognize certain types of rights and arrangements
- Understand value-add to NGOs, government agencies, and communities of a tool like LandLedger to better inform its features and design requirements
- Understand gender and minority-specific concerns that may require additional resources, and how they have been addressed thus far
- Understand how a flexible, adaptable and quicker approach (with increased ability to corroborate) could have improved or could still improve the titling programme
- Understand feasibility of community ownership for a tool like LandLedger, and the limits therein.
Findings
There are gaps at the community, municipal, and national levels in terms of technical support access and ability, database interoperability, real-time information access, and ability to validate claimant details.
The great chasm between those seeking a title and those receiving a title presents a major need for support and resources during the in-between, which can take years, and the country teams and communities we spoke with see a plethora of use-cases and value-add to a service like what the LandLedger platform seeks to provide.
Institutions Consulted
We spoke with organizations and community members across a wide spectrum of the land titling process and system. These included government partners like ANT (National Land Agency), URT (Land Restitution Unit), ART (Rural Development Agency), IGAC (National Geographic and Cartographic Institute); teams like IOM Bogota and Caqueta, Kadaster/Tierra en Paz, Opcion Legal, and community workshops with families in Florencia, Caqueta.