UNITED NATIONS ECONOMIC COMMISSION FOR EUROPECOMMITTEE ON HUMAN SETTTLEMENTS

WORKING PARTY ON LAND ADMINISTRATION

Workshop“Spatial Information Management for Sustainable Real Estate Market

Best Practice Guidelines on Nation-Wide land Administration”Athens, Greece, 28-31 May 2003

Theme 4.SIM for sustainable Real Estate Market – Technical Matters

INFORMATION SYSTEM OF THE CADASTRE OF REAL ESTATESOF THE CZECH REPUBLIC

AS A TOOL SUPPORTING REAL ESTATE MARKET

Vít SUCHÁNEK

CZECH OFFICE FOR SURVEYING, MAPPING AND CADASTRE

A reliable and well functioning Land Information System can form a very important factor, influencing a real estate market. This paper describes how the Information System of the Cadastre of Real Estates of the Czech Republic was developed and gives also a basic description of the system. A special attention is given to these features of the system, which are important for the smooth functionality of the real estate market in the Czech Republic.

I. BACKGROUND INFORMATION

A. THE BRANCH OF THE COSMC

The Czech Office for Surveying, Mapping and Cadastre (“COSMC”) is the supreme and independent body of the state administration in this field. The President, appointed by the Government of the Czech Republic and responsible only to the Prime Minister, heads it. The COSMC ensures the uniform performance of the administration of the Cadastre of Real Estates of the Czech Republic (“CRE”), establishment and maintenance of survey control, creation, updating and editing of basic and thematic state map series, standardization of names of geographic objects, development and maintenance of the Automated Information System of Surveying and Cadastre, documentation of results of survey activities. The COSMC also acts as the coordinator of the research and of the international cooperation in surveying and mapping, exercises controls over the Land Survey Office, over Survey and Cadastral Inspectorates and over Cadastral Offices, grants and withdraws special licences of surveyors, nominates administrators of basic and thematic map series and has some other duties. The COSMC (78 employees) has its own chapter in the State budget of the Czech Republic. Administration of CRE is performed by 77 cadastral offices in districts and their 34 sub-district branch offices in larger towns (5200 employees). Carrying out the administration of the CRE is the most important task and amounts to approximately 80% of all activities in the sector of the COSMC.  Land Survey Office apart from the duties in the field of surveying and mapping over the whole territory of the Czech Republic also performs the administration of the Central Database of CRE.Seven Survey and Cadastral Inspectorates (90 employees) supervise the performance of cadastral offices and those activities of private companies and licensed surveyors related to the state administration.

B. THE CADASTRE OF REAL ESTATES OF THE CZECH REPUBLIC

There are two main parts of the Cadastre of Real Estates of the Czech Republic (“CRE”): Descriptive Information Files (“DIF”) – “written part of CRE” - consist of records on

territorial and cadastral units, parcels, owners and other rightful claimants, rights, encumbrances, mortgages, etc. DIF have been fully computerised since 1998.

Survey Information Files (“SIF”) are represented by cadastral maps mostly. Cadastral maps are either in an analogue form (about 78% of the territory) or in a computerised form – Digital Cadastral Maps (“DCM”) – about 22% of the territory. Digitising of cadastral maps should be finished by 2008. Cadastral offices administrate cadastral maps, but private licensed surveyors provide cadastral offices with data for the maintenance of cadastral maps.

The CRE comprises both a classical cadastre (a technical tool) and land registry (a legal part) according to the new cadastral legislation since 1.1.1993. Cadastral offices in cases of the entries of proprietary and factual rights related to the real estates (e.g. a case of the contract

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based conveyance of a real property) act as courts in many European countries. Entry into the CRE is based on the decision of a cadastral office and new proprietary rights come into full force only after the entry into CRE has been made. There is also another type of the registration into the CRE - a record - when proprietary and other factual rights are changed by a decision of a court or other state administration bodies (inheritance cases, restitution cases, results of land consolidation projects, etc.). Cadastral offices in cases of records just check the technical correctness of documents. This joint administration of both legal and technical parts of land administration in one system brings extended demands on the complexity and accuracy of a supporting information system.

II. INFORMATION SYSTEM OF THE CADASTRE OF REAL ESTATES OF THE CZECH REPUBLIC

A. COURSE OF THE DEVELOPMENT

The timing of the development was determined by special conditions in the Czech Republic. It was necessary to implement a basic computerization at the level of cadastral offices, as rapidly as possible, after the great change of political and economic conditions in the Czech Republic. The target was to enable cadastral offices to cope with newly emerged duties and a huge increase of work. A rather similar PC based system; as for the data structure derived from the old mainframe system and with some known deficiencies, was implemented between 1992-94. This solution was the only possible at that time, but it also meant the postponement of the proper solution till later. The preparatory work for the Information System of the Cadastre of Real Estates of the Czech Republic (“IS CRE”) started in 1995 and 1996, when the “Strategy of the COSMC in the field of cadastral information systems” and “Introductory study of IS CRE” were completed. The following basic requirements of the IS CRE were outlined in the above-mentioned documents: To provide improved tools for the state administration of the CRE:

o To remove all deficiencies of the current system (capacity, security, standards),o To provide an integrated environment for DIF and SIF and a support for the other

documentation of the CRE,o To provide a uniform environment for local and central levels interconnected by

WAN. For users / clients:

o On-line access to cadastral information on a national-wide scale, the uniform information at the given time,

o Possibility to get information about an ownership from the whole territory in justified cases.

At the same time the main expected benefits of the IS CRE project were anticipated in the areas of: Remote access to the CRE data, a possibility to get real time information, a restricted

necessity to deal with cadastral offices, Facilitation of a data exchange with clients by a strict adherence to national data

standards, Facilitation of the co-operation with the other state administration bodies – an

expected impact on taxes, land consolidation projects, courts and police activities, etc.,

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Real estate market, banks etc. – a faster delivery of reliable data (e.g. for mortgages),

Open and flexible solution, capable to accept changes in the territorial division of the country, legislation, etc.

A Czech software house APP Czech (currently NESS Czech) was selected in an open tender in 1997 as a supplier of the system integration of the IS CRE and the IS CRE project itself started in June 1997. The original intention had been to put the IS CRE into operational run by the end of 1999, but at the beginning of the year 1999 it was found that this target would not be met. Some mistakes in the delivered solution were found during testing. Also the procurement of the hardware for the IS CRE in separate tenders was very lengthy, too. The year 2000 was devoted to the rectification of mistakes, huge testing and pilot runs of the IS CRE and a delivery of the needed hardware. The rollout of the IS CRE commenced in February 2001 and was finished in August 2001. There were 12 stages of the rollout, each consisting of approximately 10 workplaces. The important parts of the implementation at each workplace were also the migration of data from the old information system and the training of the staff. The operational run of the IS CRE in the national-wide scale started on 3 September 2001. The pilot run of the remote access to cadastral data started earlier, on 27 July 2001, when the cadastral data were accessible from about two thirds of the territory of the Czech Republic.

B. TECHNOLOGICAL INFRASTRUCTURE OF THE IS CRE

The technological structure goes arm in arm with the organizational structure. The WAN IS CRE interconnects the central and local workplaces and it is based on ATM and Frame Relay services, leased from the Czech Telecom. Its logical topology is formed by the double star with main centre in Prague and the centres of the second order in the locations of the regional cadastral offices. The initial CIR is 32or 64 kbps for local (level 1) lines and from 256 to 1024 kbps for lines from regional offices (level 2) to Prague. There is a connection to the network of governmental bodies in Prague.

A client / server architecture has been chosen. There are relational data base servers at all cadastral and branch offices and also in the centre of the EIS CRE. The local workplaces – cadastral and branch offices are, in the compliance with the legislation, the primary points of the administration (maintenance) of the CRE, all changes are in the real time replicated into the central database, which is therefore up to date.

There is also the unique point for the access to Internet for the whole branch of the COSMC and the unique point of connection of external users of the remote access to cadastral data in the central database.

As for the hardware and software environment, the IS CRE is based, with the only exception of a difference in the hardware of the central database and local workplaces, on the unified technology tools for both levels: Oracle Enterprise Edition with Oracle Spatial Data Cartridge as a database engine, BEA WebServer for the presentation on the Web, Bentley MicroStation SE, GeoOutlook as tools for different level of work with graphical

data,

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CA Unicenter for System Management, Two clusters composed of two Compaq Alpha Servers GS60 with Compaq Tru64 Unix

system, CheckPoint Firewall for central system of the IS CRE, “Wintel” platform (Intel based database, system management and Exchange servers and

workstations with Windows NT/2000 operating systems, at least three servers at each site), Windows NT workstations (about 5000) at the local level of cadastral offices. Servers have different HW configuration depending on the size of the office.

The database and application servers in the central database are built as clusters (internal and external). In case of the crash of one server, the other server takes over his role and supplies all functionality. There are also central system management and Exchange servers there. The Help Desk services (both internal and external) were established, too.

C. BASIC FEATURES, ACHIEVEMENTS AND THE FUNCTIONALITY OF THE IS CRE

Based on the successful implementation and on positive results of the operational run at all workplaces, it can be said that all objectives of the project were met.The IS CRE supports the whole administrative process at the cadastral office, inclusive of the accounting system and output of statistical data. The IS CRE enables to represent the state of the CRE in the past and, strictly for the internal use and restricted number of employees, also from the future, e.g. results of projects of subdivision plans.The IS CRE has new features that have brought achievements and new functionality for the everyday work at cadastral offices. Some important features of the IS CRE are as follows: Sufficient capacity for the increase of the volume of cadastral data, ensuing mainly from

an on-going digitising of cadastral maps, Full integration of the written and map parts (DIF and SIF) in one database and integration

of other parts of cadastral documentation; even graphical data are stored in database environment,

Full compliance of the data structure of the IS CRE with National Standards of State Information System,

Full uniformity of the IS CRE across the whole territory that is ensured by the remote installation of the application software for all workplaces at the same time and by the replications of the codebooks from the central database to all workplaces,

Co-operation with registers of inhabitants and companies, Uniform application software environment for both local and central databases, Central database is maintained through the replications of changes from local databases in

real time; graphical data are stored in the central database, too, Central database is the only point of connection for remote clients and via the central

database the national-wide query and the provision of cadastral information from the whole territory of the Czech Republic is possible,

Environment for the remote access of clients to the cadastral data is Internet, Enhanced security of the IS CRE,

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Possibilities to view historical and „future“ data, clients can be provided with the historical data (from the start of the operational run), too,

Comprehensive and countrywide unified tool for the support of all aspects of the state administration of the CRE, including the dissemination of the cadastral data.

III. CONTRIBUTIONS OF THE IS CRE FOR THE FUNCTIONALITY OF THE REAL ESTATE MARKET IN THE CZECH REPUBLIC

Some significant features of the IS CRE from the point of view of the influence on the functionality of the real estate market can be seen especially in following characteristics of the IS CRE: Legal security of owners and others rightful claimants, Sufficient capacity and performance of the IS CRE, Ways of diffusion of cadastral information.

A. LEGAL SECURITY OF OWNERS AND OTHERS RIGHTFUL CLAIMANTSThe level of the legal security itself is determined by the Czech legislation. Allow me to remind the fact that the CRE comprises both the “classical” cadastre and the Land Registry. This fact contributes to the complexity of the IS CRE and to the requirements of its correctness and security, as the written part of the CRE (DIF) is exclusively held in the computerised form. The IS CRE meets all requirements of the Czech legislation. The IS CRE is a reliable and robust system, which has never broken down from the start of the operational run and there have not been any complaints from the legal point of view, touch wood. All operations in the IS CRE are logged and it is possible to find out the author of any operation. Before the new state-of-art of the CRE is validated in the case of the change, an independent check of the new state has to be carry out.

B. SUFFICIENT CAPACITY AND PERFORMANCE OF THE IS CRE

The IS CRE project has brought a sufficient capacity for the ongoing increase of both the volume of the cadastral files and demands of the performance of cadastral offices. A complete renewal of the hardware formed a part of the project. The IS CRE, in spite of the fact of the increased complexity and enhanced security in the comparison with the old system, has a needed performance to cope with growing requirements on the registration in to the CRE and the diffusion of cadastral information.Following tables give the overview of the performance of the cadastral offices since the start of the CRE in 1993:

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Table 1

Table 2

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Facts from the Table 1, depicting the performance of cadastral offices (number of entries into CRE and the average time of the processing of a case), have significance from the point of view of the functionality of the real estate market. An entry into the CRE usually corresponds to a contract based conveyance of a real estate property or a mortgage. An average time of the processing of an entry into the CRE was influenced in 2001 and 2002 by the start of the operational run of the IS CRE. Cadastral offices had to be closed for about 4 weeks during the implementation of the IS CRE and it caused a backlog of work. The IS CRE had after the start a slower performance, either due to the necessity of some tuning of the system, either due to the fact that the staff at cadastral offices needed some time to learn how to operate a complete new and very complex system. The average time of a processing of an entry into CRE decreases constantly, e.g. in the I.Q. 2003 amounted to 1.29 months. There are also big differences in numbers of cases – proceedings, delivered to an individual cadastre office. An ability of a cadastral office as for the time needed to process cases is not influenced by the performance of the IS CRE, but there are others factors, e.g. a sudden increase of cases, caused usually by the wave of a privatisation of apartments or by the privatisation of a state agricultural land. The worst case is the Cadastral Office Prague-City, where there was an increase of cases in 2002 in the comparison with 2001 by 31.5%. Following table gives the overview of cadastral and branch offices divided according to the needed time for the processing of an entry into CRE during the first quarter of 2003:

Time of processing in months

0.04–0.5 0.51–1.0 1.01-1.29 1.30-2.0 2.01-3.0 3.01-4.0 4.01-4.51

Number of workplaces

40 40 13 8 8 1 1

Table 3 – Division of workplaces according to the time of the processing of an entry

C. WAYS OF DIFFUSION OF CADASTRAL INFORMATION

The Czech By-law No. 162/2001 Coll., on Cadastral Data Provision, determines an access to the cadastral data. The By-law regulates types and forms of data outputs from the CRE inclusive of ways of payment for data provision.

There are following main forms of data provision: Data files provided by the means of Exchange formats, Title deeds (public documents recognisable by courts etc.) Provision of outputs and copies (not public documents), Remote access.The IS CRE supports all mentioned possibilities of a diffusion of the cadastral data.

The IS CRE supports two kinds of exchange formats. “Old” exchange format (OEF) was used during the run of the old system and exports descriptive data in dbf files and graphical data into vkm file. The OEF will be supported only till 2004, just in order to give clients sufficient time to move to the NEF. “New” exchange format (NEF) exports descriptive and graphical data as one file. In the comparison to the OEF there are some advantages: NEF contains all digital cadastral data (DIF and SIF, data related procedures at cadastral

offices),

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NEF has possibility to issue the first export of the data from any moment from the start of the operational run of the IS CRE (the 3 September 2001),

By means of the NEF only the changes of data from the given time can be exported. The processing of the NEF is much faster then the OEF as NEF corresponds to the data

model.

Of course, the IS CRE supports provision of all public documents, usually Title deeds. The cadastral office is entitled to issue a public document only in the framework of its territorial jurisdiction.

Following table depicts the overview of the issued public documents in 1993 – 2002:

Table 4 (It does not comprise the diffusion of data provided by a Remote access to the cadastral data.)

The remote access to the cadastral data forms a new category of the diffusion of the cadastral data. The remote access has two variants – internal and external. Both of them use the same data and the same application. The difference is in the way of the connection to the central database. Internal users (cadastral employees) use internal WAN, external users Internet. An external client has to conclude a contract with the COSMC, in which, according to the nature of the client, its remote access rights and authorisation is assigned. Each single client receives its password. The remote access enables to retrieve essentially the same extent of information, inclusive of digital map data, as at a counter of a cadastral office. A simple browser is enough to retrieve the cadastral data; no special software is needed. Each client gets an account, the delivery of data by remote access is charged.

The access is to the central database, which thanks to the data replicated from local databases is kept up-to-date. The security of the central database is protected by a firewall. Data are provided by standardised services.

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Examples of screens of the remote access (http://katastr.cuzk.cz)

Some features and advantages of the remote access are: Good response time – in the average, an external user obtains result in half of a minute

after the confirmation of his query on his PC keyboard, “Fresh” information – not older than 2.5 hours (in maximum), because 2 hours are limit

for replication of changes in the cadastral data from all cadastral offices to the central database,

Client can obtain basically the same data as at a counter of a cadastral office, Up-to-date and country-wide data are accessible, including of the data of digital cadastral

maps (in the available extent), Reports are not public documents – they have the information value only, but there are up-

to-date, Reports are equipped with time marks – the time of the last connection with the local

database. It allows the client to be aware of the time when the contents of the report corresponded to the state-of art of the CRE at the cadastral office,

Clients at counters of cadastral offices can obtain cadastral data not only within the jurisdiction of the cadastral office in question, but from the whole territory of the Czech Republic (information value only),

Service is available for 7 days/ 24 hours, Free access to a training system, a vast user documentation available on the web, Client does not need any special software, only a common browser, available formats are

pdf or html, Paid service, but very cheap - 50 CZK (about 1.5 EUR) per screen. The price of the output

is reflected on the screen as soon as the query is processed. Therefore a client can assess the price before opening a report – a protection against mistyping and wrong parameters of the query.

The list of main categories of the cadastral data accessible via Internet: Basic information on the CRE:

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Excerpt from the CRE (Title deed), Drawing of cadastral and chart map, Information on parcels.

Information on procedures at cadastral offices (enables to find out the state-of-art of the processing of the separate case).

Information for a client: Access to the previous reports in 24 hours after the processing without an additional

charging, Information related to the client’s account, Price list, Change of the password.

All accessible information (includes also possibilities of the Basic information): Information on territorial units, Information on buildings, Information on apartments, List of parcels, List of building, Overview of ownership, Special data (e.g. for private surveyors).

The following picture shows the development of the amount of external clients interested in remote access services by the end of February 2003:

The current number of the clients of the external remote access is 2869 (by 25.4.2003). The interest in the remote access services has still been increasing. There were about 1500 clients by the end of 2001. As for the real estate market there is a positive phenomenon that the decisive players in this field are interested in the remote access services, e.g. Real Estate Agencies (537 clients), Banks and Insurance Companies (111), Lawyers and Notaries (440) and Designers (61) – see the overall chart below. Unfortunately, public administration bodies

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and utility companies have shown a very small interest yet – only 73 clients. These bodies still force their clients to obtain a title deed from the cadastral office. The main reasons are that the remote access is a paid service and public administration bodies have not introduced the utilisation and possibilities of the remote access to the cadastral data in their administrative proceedings. In that case the influence of the remote access on the functionality of the real estate market might be higher. Anyway, there were 177 687 reports issued by the external remote access and 103 972 reports issued by the internal remote access (at cadastral offices) besides the public documents (official title deeds) in 2002.

An overview of the income, created by the branch of the COSMC (1 EUR=31.375 CZK): Administrative fees (fiscal stamps for public documents) – a direct income of the Treasury

– 14.85 million EUR, Income of the COSMC from data provision - 6.54 million EUR, from it remote access

amounts to 0.60 million EUR, Value of products provided for public administration bodies free of charge - 9.94 million

EUR.

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IV. CONCLUSION

The COSMC considers the IS CRE project as a very successful one, in spite of some difficulties connected with the course of the project. The IS CRE itself is a well functioning system, supporting completely the administration of the CRE and also including new tools for the diffusion of the cadastral data. The COSMC also considers the IS CRE and especially its remote access services as an important contribution to the facilitating and speeding up procedures connected with the functionality of the real estate market. In this respect, there is still a substantial capacity of the remote access services waiting for the utilisation in the future. There has been and will be the continuous development of the IS CRE in order to keep the system in the compliance with the new legislation and new demands of the state administration. A part of the future development will be the accommodation of the IS CRE to the newly emerged implementation of the e-government concept in the Czech Republic. The Ministry of Informatics of the Czech Republic was established by 1.1.2003. The Ministry of Informatics and the COSMC will co-operate jointly at the step-by-step implementation of the full e-government concept in the area of the CRE. It will not be an easy task as some changes in both the common and cadastral legislation will be necessary and there is also some lack of the needed funding.

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