On recognizing land administration as critical, public good infrastructure

Failure to recognize land administration systems as infrastructure creates potential funding and maintenance problems. Wider economic, social, and environmental benefits of effective land administration are consequently put at risk. Land administration must be recognized as critical, public good infrastructure. An evaluation method for testing land administration as an infrastructure is developed and applied. The method utilizes tools for defining and classifying infrastructure, public goods, and critical infrastructures. Arguments for land administration as infrastructure are revealed to reside within the land administration discipline: mainstream views regularly fail to recognize the argument. Reasons include the internal focus of scientific disciplines, the failure of land administrators to engage across disciplines, the global disparity of approaches to land administration, and the lack of visible or physical presence for land administration infrastructure. The results of three empirical studies support the notion that land administration is a critical, public good infrastructure. It concluded that infrastructure funding and maintenance regimes need to be depoliticized, potentially through the development of evidence based metrics, that land administrators must continue to promote land administration outwardly, and that the evaluation approach be extended and enhanced for use in directed land administration projects and studies.

► Failure to recognize land administration systems as infrastructure creates potential funding and maintenance problems.
► Only land administrators tend to argue for land administration as an infrastructure.
► Multiple evaluation approaches demonstrate that land administration is an infrastructure.
► Infrastructure funding and maintenance regimes need to be depoliticized.