1. Responsible Land Governance and Sustainable Value Chains:
Opportunities of the Internet
Virgilio R. De Los Reyes
Department of Agrarian Reform, Philippines
2016 Land and Poverty Conference
15 March 2016; Washington D.C.

2. In the Philippines, digital technologies improved land governance and agricultural value chains But hard lessons were learned In this discussion, three lessons will be discussed

3. Land governance systems: Who bears the cost?
Government? Private sector? Mix of both?
12 million land parcels in the Philippines are covered by certificates of title ,kept in more than100 Registers of Deeds [approximately another 12 million need to be covered]
Objective of digitization: security, ease of transactions, management tool, and (policy inputs?)
Cost to build: private contractor
Recovery: fees on a pay-per-use basis [for a limited period]

4. Implications
Custom-made systems always give rise to IPR issues; inter-operability with other systems becomes a challenge
Private transactions have the potential to pay for the costs of establishment; BUT data on land has great potential for policy formulation (which may not be in the original design); who bears the cost of such collation and analysis?
Use of data for policy formulation may take a back seat
Land governance initiatives (of government) has multiplier effects; yet this may be second priority
PROVIDER has a different bottom line
WARNING!!!!!

5. Land governance: Carriage before the horse
Issuance of certificates of title - digitized but the basic laws on registration, land grants, surveying and recognition of ownership are old laws (oldest is 85 years old, all prior to the digital age)
Digitization is the carriage and the law is the horse. It is the case of technology first before the complements
Land governance initiatives focused re-casting institutional arrangements instead of the basic laws; digitization went ahead chaos

6. Civil servants will resist technological change UNLESS it makes their work easier
The Department of Agrarian Reform developed two IT- enabled tools: track progress of land acquisition (OpTool) and a case tracking system (LCMS)
The OpTool tracked stages of land acquisition
The LCMS monitored the various stages of case resolution
In both systems, uptake was slow. Users saw it as simply as a way to look over their shoulders
Enhancements in the system, which made their work easier to finish, was the clincher for higher adaptation
HOWEVER, the interoperability of the systems with other agencies remains a dream

7. Digital technology makes the first step, an easy one – financial inclusion
The Land Bank is the collector of farmers’ amortization payments [and prepares amortization tables]for the land awarded by the government [now around 750,000 amortizing farmers]
Amounts collected are small, cost to pay at the offices of the bank are huge; tendency is to pay in lump sums, but these are spent for other necessities
Collections by farmer leaders or bank personnel subject to misappropriation, robbery, delay in giving proof of payment
POS-like machines are now available nation-wide, collectors are Land Bank personnel (cum financial inclusion promoters)
The first step to financial inclusion – a bank record
The next steps: account and credit history = financial literacy + access to credit