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Evaluation and assessment of land administration system (LAS) has been getting more attention over the last few years. Different assessment approaches have been tried across land administration systems at international level to assess the performance of these systems, but the attention is given to only those parameters which are common to all these systems. In some cases, legal and technical parameters are considered while institutional and organisational parameters got more attention in others. There have been a few efforts to standardise the procedures for assessing the performance of land administration systems at international level but no internationally accepted or standardised method is there to assess the quality of a standalone LAS. There is a need to develop a quality assessment framework for assessing the quality of a standalone LAS in a country taking into account all its components and parameters as per quality requirements.
The core objective of this research is to develop a quality assessment framework for assessing the quality of LAS and then apply Total Quality Management (TQM) concepts to land administration using a stepwise approach of exploratory and explanatory case studies. This research identifies the elements, indicators, and variables that are required for assessing the quality of LAS. The case of LAS in Pakistan is presented and discussed in this research through the use of both an exploratory and an explanatory case study. The quality improvement guidelines are then developed within the broad context of TQM for improving the quality of the LAS in Pakistan, which was presupposed as deteriorated.
To be able to achieve the above objectives, the first part of this research identifies and analyses a set of structured theories as a conceptual framework. The framework defines concepts on the two important sets of aspects of LAS namely the institutional and technical. The institutional ones are looked at within three basic categories of institutions namely; the constitutional order, institutional arrangements, and normative behavioural codes. The technical ones are considered at three organisational levels namely; strategic/policy level, management level, and operational level. These concepts are considered as the basis for designing the LAS quality assessment framework. It is argued in this study, that due to the unclear boundary between the institutional and technical aspects of LAS, the combined use of both an exploratory and an explanatory case study is more suitable to explore the issues of the existing LAS first and then explain the quality situation through quality indicators and variables later on.
The second part of this research explores the issues of the existing LAS in Pakistan to understand the present situation and identify the most important elements of the system. An exploratory case study approach is used in this case to collect both qualitative and quantitative data for analysing the issues of the existing LAS in the country. The qualitative data was collected through interviews (structured and semi-structured) with stakeholders including; land administration agency officials, land owners, real estate agents, and law professionals. The quantitative data was collected using questionnaires circulated amongst the stakeholders. Through analysis of transcribed qualitative and quantitative data from this exploratory case study, the most important elements and other contributing elements were selected to develop the quality assessment framework. This framework includes all elements of institutional and technical aspects, their quality indicators, and variables which were based on the principles of international ‘Best Practices’ and other research studies carried out in assessing and evaluating land administration systems.
The third part of this research concerns the quality assessment of LAS in Pakistan using the designed quality assessment framework. An explanatory case study approach is adopted in this case to understand the quality situation of the existing LAS in Pakistan by collecting both the qualitative and quantitative data through visits, interviews, meetings, and questionnaires using the designed quality assessment framework. The quality indicators for elements of the institutional and technical aspects of LAS were analysed. The analysis of this data presented a clear understanding of the present status of these quality indicators in the existing LAS of Pakistan. Among those the important ones are the tenure security, land dispute resolution, land administration processes, and financing and data cost on the institutional side while the technology adoption, data organisation, workflows for land administration processes, and quality standards are the important ones on technical side.
The last part of this research develops a set of guidelines to apply TQM concepts to LAS in Pakistan. Since, the hierarchical process of quality includes the development from Inspection through to Quality Control (QC), within the context of systems of Quality Assurance (QA) under the wider management approach of TQM. Therefore, the design of these quality improvement guidelines is carried out within the broad context of TQM. These quality improvement guidelines are categorised within three stages of TQM namely; the Inspection stage, QC stage, and QA stage. All these quality improvement guidelines are developed on the basis of results obtained from the case study carried out in Pakistan. Among those the technology adoption and data organisation are considered under the Inspection stage of TQM. The land administration processes, land dispute resolution, workflows for land administration processes, and quality standards are considered within the QC while the tenure security and financing and data cost are considered under the QA stages of TQM.
As has been shown for the case of Pakistan, the designed quality assessment framework for LAS can be used to assess an existing standalone system and prioritize elements to be addressed through the quality improvement guidelines. Although the framework can be the starting point of a similar assessment in another country, the country specifics will always lead to adaptation for that situation.