Quality assessment of the land administration system in Pakistan

Performance issues of land administration systems, specifically the quality aspects, have been getting more attention over the last few years. Different assessment attempts have been carried out at international level, across different land administration systems in the world, to evaluate the performance of land administration systems by comparing different aspects of these systems. In all these evaluations, prime attention is given to only those measuring parameters which are common to all these systems. In some cases, legal and technical parameters are considered while the institutional and organisational parameters receive 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 there is no internationally accepted or standardised method to assess the quality of a standalone land administration system (LAS) within a country's environment. To be able to assess the quality of a standalone LAS, this paper develops a conceptual and methodological framework for carrying out in-depth analysis of the system. This research identifies those elements, indicators and variables that are required for assessing the quality of a standalone LAS. In order to identify such elements, indicators and variables to be included in the framework, a theoretical background is first discussed. A quality assessment framework and the methodological approach for assessing the quality of LASs are then developed. The approach is finally applied to assess the quality situation of the LAS in Pakistan by using the quality assessment framework via an explanatory case-study approach.