As mentioned before, the past months I’ve been working on my Bachelor Thesis (Information Science, Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands), and I can now proudly announce it’s accepted in its final version. To my supervisor Luca Consoli: Thank You!
The thesis can be downloaded in pdf format here.
Abstract
An overview of complexities and opportunities regarding the use of ICT for land administration in Ethiopia seems to be lacking. Therefore, this thesis concerns the following problem statement: “What are the opportunities and complexities regarding the use of ICT for land administration in Ethiopia?”
In order to uncover these complexities and opportunities, both the benefits of good land administration in general – for which ICT is assumed to be an asset – and Ethiopia’s past and current land administration practices have been explored, as well as documented best practices.
The principles of appropriate technology are adhered to during this research process, for Ethiopia is a developing country and appropriate technology focuses on the use of technology, such as ICT, in the context of developing countries.
Since the principles of appropriate technology also address the complexities and benefits (opportunities) of technologies – such as ICT – in developing countries, it provides a framework for researching the problem statement. It has therefore been used as the framework underlying this thesis.
Hi!
I downloaded your thesis and had a brief look. I think they should use OpenStreetMap for land administration
What do you think?
Alex
Hi Alex,
Thanks for your comment! If the information on your website is correct, OpenStreetMap indeed could be a better solution than GoogleMaps in this scenario.
However, both GoogleMaps and OpenStreetMap are not a complete solution on its own. As is stated in my thesis, the complexities involved with Ethiopia’s land administration go far beyond choosing appropriate the software. If a properly functioning information system harbouring all spatial data and tailored to the organizations’ changing(!) needs could be designed, developed and implemented, it indeed would be interesting to visualize it by using an open internet based map system like GoogleMaps or OpenStreetMap. It should be noted however that as soon as such an information system is developed, it is only very little effort to connect to the map software using an API (tutorials can be found all over the web).
Some further drawbacks popping up in my head right now are:
- you need stable internet and electricity;
- you need to pay special attention to both security and privacy issues as you’re about to connect a government system containing very valuable and often private information to the internet.
In short: yes it seems to be better than GoogleMaps, but it is not a complete solution – and in this case only a complete solution is a real solution.
I hope this is any help to you.
Sander