The Sustainability of GIS Services in The Framework of E-Government



5. Case study to implement the eGIS portal for on-line cadastre services in Egypt

5.1 Cadastre Services in Egypt; Background
The current cadastre services in Egypt are provided by 'scattered' organizations, the Egyptian Survey Authority ESA, the Registration Estate Department REPD and the Real estate Tax department RETD, which is difficult to access simultaneously to provide coherent set of services. Further, the initiatives took place in these organizations to introduce digital technologies were made in ‘isolation’, consequently, the related data sets in these organizations cannot be easily integrated and shared due to lack of harmonization between them. Further, no effective tools exist for on-line access of cadastre services. As a result, the respond to requests for information and services is slow; consequently user’s dissatisfaction and the economic growth in the geo-information market is below expectation.

The present government is enforcing several measures to strengthen the real estate market aiming to speedup efforts to complete the national land registers, enable advanced services to all stakeholders and consequently encourage international investors.

In this context, this paper proposes an On-line Cadastre Portal, eCAD Portal, in the framework of the Egyptian E-Government and NSDI initiatives. The primary use of the On-line Cadastre Portal is for discovery, access and chaining of cadastre and land registry services held at government agency offices within Egypt. Such tool will enable advanced services to all stakeholders in the real estate market.

A case study was conducted in the framework of the cooperation program between ITC (the Netherlands) and ESA, as reviewed in [8], to develop a prototype for eCAD to address both institutional and technical issues, which are relevant to achieve these business goals.

5.2 The Case Study Business Perspective
In this case study, many institutional arrangements have been addressed in order to structure and mange a virtual enterprise, the’ Virtual Land Agency’, networking all public and private institutions who are involved in the real estate market in such a way that third parties see it as an identifiable and complete organization (one enterprise), as shown in figure (4). The provision of on-line services to all stakeholders in the real estate market will be the key task of such enterprise. Such services can be simple one (i.e. provided by one of the organizations involved in the cadastre business) or complex one (i.e. require the chaining of several functionalities in these organizations). The provision of spatial data and GIS and cadastre functionalities, are included. The objectives are: better customer satisfaction, reduced time-to-market and adaptation to changes in the surrounding environment. By taking this approach, more tightly integration and communication is achieved through a common vision on the economic potentials of cadastre data and resolving business conflicts, measures to achieve interoperability of data, services and ICT resources, the necessary arrangements to establish clear responsibilities for each of the participating institutions, and the creation a ‘healthy working relationships.

These arrangements were considered in this case study in the framework of the required public private partnership PPP in the real estate industry in Egypt. Further details are reviewed in [7].

5.3 The Case Study Technical Perspective
This case study addressed the requirements and components to implement a customized portal for on-line delivery of cadastre services, in the framework of the E-Government and the Spatial Data Infrastructure NSDI initiatives, as shown figure (4). The proposed architecture of such portal, on the other hand, will materialize the key functionalities that are necessary for the successful implementation of the ‘Virtual land Agency’.


Figure (4): Key Functionalities in the On-Line Cadastre Portal


  • The operational model of such an enterprise is based on the concept of unbundling of the functionalities of current stand-alone systems in these organizations to make them available as independently developed, yet interoperable autonomous services that many of them can run (or at least invoked) as Web services. Such functionalities can be:
  • The Egyptian Survey Authority (ESA) performs field survey operations, map making and GIS operations, the management and provision of spatial data for topographic features and cadastre parcels, the storage of mutation forms for all parcels, the provision of information about of ownership and the type of land use, the provision of information about mortgages on land, etc.
  • The Registration Estate Department (REPND) performs operations for the legalization of ownership and transactions, the management and provision of ownership information and legal documents, the generation statistics on the dynamics of the real estate market, the provision of information about mortgages on land, etc.
  • The real Estate Taxation Department (RETD) performs operations for the field collection of information about ‘taxable’ real estate objects, management and provision of information about property tax and taxpayers, develop models for the valuation and taxation of properties in the various regions in the country, generate statistics about revenues from real estate tax, etc.
  • The State Owned Land Agency (SOLA) performs operations for the collection of information about the status of the state-owned land, resolve ownership disputes, develop land use scenarios, set models for the evaluation and valuation of land, set pricing policies, etc.
  • Banks provides ‘real estate mortgaging’ services.
  • Several institutions from the private sector are playing a role in the real estate market, according to their competent and expertise, such survey and mapping companies (map making and GIS operations), IT companies (establishment systems for information management, databases, computers, networks), companies experience in management and control (planning and management of operations, quality control), real estate brokers and layers (provide information about marketing and valuation of land parcels), banks and financial bodies (provide mortgages and credit services), etc.
An infrastructure (a framework), with institutional and technical arrangements will be required to support the networking and chaining of these functionalities and services to create customized solutions for the required services. Integration is not limited to data exchange capabilities, but also concerns the rest of the enterprise by connecting all necessary functions and heterogeneous functional entities. The infrastructure will manage information, processes, control workflows within- and across the boundaries of the participating organizations. To implement such an infrastructure, a special services based on concepts reviewed in Section 4 in this paper, will be developed to provide the option of combining and chaining of services (a kind of broker/mediator), also to manage inter-organizational workflows and manage the quality of services in such wider network of services, operating under different rules and constraints. Such broker will also serve as the mechanism supporting the searching for products by users, the selection of partners and the creation and control of workflows. Further details about the supporting technologies can be found in [1], [2], [3], [4], [5], [6].

This broker, as shown in Figure [5], is composed of several functionalities such as:
  • User Interface: a browser (with a graphic interface) to provide access to different services; cadastre data and functionalities (simple or complex) in the registered agencies.
  • Services to create Data and Service Catalogs, and metadata query.
  • A pool of specially designed (tailored) cadastre services, chaining several functionalities that are available at registered data and service providers.
  • The broker’s framework, within which an organized collection of open standard specifications can be implemented to create spatial data and vendor neutral "plug and play" portal infrastructures. This allows links and the possibility to invoke governmental- and commercial-off-shelf services, which provides a pool of Web services to perform GIS operations such as access maps, features, display and overlay maps, integrate data sets, visualize maps, terrain analysis, secure data download and allow ‘immediate’ manipulation of spatial data sets, etc.

    Figure (5): The e-GIS Broker Architecture
  • Workflow Management capabilities with:
  • Search Engine: searches for business processes in the Workflow Service Catalogue
  • Workflow Service Catalog: support various enterprises to advertise their data and services
  • Workflow Definition Tools: creates definitions of the various processes
  • Workflow Rule Engine: executes the workflow and chain services across the boundaries of the various enterprises
  • Administration and Control Tool: keeps track of workflow progress
Further, this broker will operate in the framework of the NSDI initiatives, making use of all tools offered to resolve various business constraints as well as data and processes interoperability issues amongst the participating nodes, as detailed in [6].

Several examples were tested, based on Web and workflow management technologies at ITC, as reviewed in [6], [7]. At the moment, the management of ESA is considering options for real implementation of such services.

6. Concluding Remarks
Geo-information production services can be offered in a market place, using the Web and Internet as the network environment that can reach more customers at lower prices and taking advantage of the efforts and advances on existing SDI concept which will be improved to a Geo-information Service Infrastructure (GSI), that as its name suggest, can offer data plus services for all the geomantic players, including direct contact with customers and their requirements, all together in a virtual environment, composed of a collection of independent enterprises offering their core competences and joining together in a dynamic way to offer and produce complex products.

By using the concept of the virtual enterprise, the GSI has been outlined. Such an enterprise can extend its share in the ever-growing information mark by providing access to a variety of GIS services and to be a tool to support the generation of ’complex’ products/services. Such view will enhance the existing geo-spatial data infrastructure concept. The geo-information ‘service’ infrastructure opens new business opportunities for service delivery, facilitating service search and execution, and increasing the interest of organizations to participate in geo-information infrastructure initiatives. It also provide huge entry opportunities for ’small niche players to enter the market with specific offering. However, these opportunities are limited by the availability of data/service repositories and catalogues in the market. In the context of the Egyptian government measures to improve the performance of the Real Estate market, the proposed Online Cadastre Portal, in the framework of the E-Government and NSDI initiatives, enables advanced services for the delivery of on-line spatial data and GIS and cadastre functionalities to all stakeholders. The Portal includes the necessary services, which are needed to share resources through Web services, access and download data, chain various functionalities in several agencies to compose a service, coordinate and control the execution of identified, tailored, services. Several technologies are needed to perform these tasks such as Web services providing GIS functionalities, workflow management services, service brokers, etc.

The proposed architecture, allows wide range of applications for GIS users to access and invoke geo-processes supplied by multiple-vendors, to secure data download and allow ‘immediate’ manipulation of spatial data. The proposed architecture for the portal also provide the capability to industrial and service sectors to work beyond their boundaries and operate in a more tightly coupled mode, forming integrated ‘virtual’ enterprises, to seize business opportunity in the real estate market.

7. References
  1. T. Adams and S. Dworkin. WfMC Workflow Handbook, chapter Workflow Interoperability Between Businesses, pages 211–221. John Wiley & Sons, 1997.
  2. N. Alameh. Scalable and Extensible Infrastructures for Distributing Interoperable Geographic Information Services on the Internet. PhD thesis, Massachusetts In stitute of Technology (MIT), Massachussets, United States of America, 2001.
  3. L. Alvarez. Geoinformation virtual enterprises: design and process management. Master Thesis, International Institute for Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation ITC, Enschede, The Netherlands, March 2003.
  4. J. Kanet, W. Faisst, and P. Mertens. Application of information technology to a virtual enterprise broker: The case of bill epstein. International Journal of Production Economics, 62:23–32, 1999.
  5. OpenGIS Web Services Architecture. Discussion paper, Version: 0.3, No. OGC 03-025, Open GIS Consortium Inc., January 2003. Editor: Joshua Lieberman
  6. M. Radwan, L. Alvarez, R Onchaga, and J Morales. ‘The changing role of the geo-data infrastructure; from a data delivery network to a virtual enterprise supporting complex services’, ISPRS Congress, Istanbul, July 2004
  7. M. Radwan, H. Nasr, C. Lemmen, S. Hassan, ‘The Egyptian Survey Authority Business Model to Strengthen Public Private Partnership in the Real Estate Industry’ , FIG Week, Cairo, April 2005
  8. M. Radwan, Y. Bishr, B. Emara, A. Saleh, R. Sabrah, . On-line Cadastre Portal Services in the Framework of E-Government to Supprt Real Estate Industry in Egypt, FIG Week, Cairo 2005
  9. OECD. The e-Government Imperative: Main Findings, OECD Policy Brief, 2003
  10. FIG Commission 7 Publications. ‘e-land administration’ workshop, Austria, 2004
Page 3 of 3
| Previous |