Hanoi (VNA) - A national land databasewill be completed in 2020 and information on land from the smallestadministrative unit to the central level would be available.

The Ministry of Natural Resources andEnvironment (MONRE) said at a recent conference that the public will also beable to access the database.

The moving of land records from paper to digitalformat is part of Vietnam’s e-government programme, signifying the VietnameseGovernment’s latest attempt to catch up with the digital age and the advent ofthe fourth industrial revolution.

The land database is not just an archive ofinformation, it will also serve as a crucial tool for State management andsatisfy the demands to access land information as well as land policies of allorganisations, businesses and the public in a transparent, objective andconvenient manner.

The land database would also serve to make surethat efforts to reform administrative procedures by various ministries andState agencies – especially between the environment ministry, tax and customsbureaus – will be conducted in sync with each other.

Therefore, aside from consolidating land-relatedpolicies and legal frameworks, as well as planning and financial tools, themodernisation of the cadastral document system, as well as building the landdatabase and national land information system are top priorities on theministry’s upcoming agenda, said MONRE Minister Tran Hong Ha.

Ha said that in addition to initial investmentfrom the State, in order to speed up the process, all resources from society –including both foreign and domestic tech companies working in service and ITinfrastructure fields – will be mobilised under various modelsincluding Build-Transfer (BT) and Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT) to make sure thatthe database can cover all areas and be accessed with ease from everywhere inthe country, as the ministry aims towards “effective socialisation of thecurrently State-managed land information provision service.”

At the conference, experts and businessesdiscussed optimal ways to build the land database, with user experienceremaining among the top concerns – how to make the information portal such thateven those without advanced knowledge of IT could easily browse the portal andmake use of the service.

Dao Trung Chinh, deputy director general of theGeneral Department of Land Administration (GDLA) under MONRE, said thatthe Government and the ministry itself has issued several legal frameworksproviding details on the building of national land database and landinformation system. In addition, the ministry is submitting to the Governmentfor review two decrees on land e-transactions and on regulations for thebuilding, operating, and use of the land information system, as well as otheraccompanying circulars to help clarify the decrees.

According to Chinh, the deployment of the landinformation system must be consistent across all 63 municipalities andprovinces in the country. The technology must also be transferred to landregistration offices in these localities to ensure full exploitation of theproduct, he added.-VNA