Exploring Custodianship Roles and Responsibilities for Cadastral Data in the Context of the South African Spatial Data Infrastructure

Abstract

data describe the legal boundaries of properties, are the basis for land administration, and are essential for land reform. In South Africa, the Land Survey Act assigns responsibility for cadastral data to the Provincial Surveyor-General (SG) and responsibility for consolidating a national cadastral data set to the Chief Surveyor-General (CSG). However, in practice, some municipalities, especially metropolitan municipalities, maintain and manage cadastral data for their areas of jurisdiction and share their data sets with the respective Provincial SG Offices. The metropolitan municipalities need cadastral data that are up to date because of rapid urbanisation, land development and sustainable development. Presently, there is no clear co-ordination and co-operation among stakeholders, there are no collaborative agreements regarding activities of mutual interest, and organs of state are working in silos. The Spatial Data Infrastructure Act, (No. 54 of 2003) (SDI Act), establishes the South African Spatial Data Infrastructure (SASDI) as a national technical, institutional and policy framework to coordinate the collection and management of geospatial information and its significance is to promote coordination and collaboration amongst organs of state in order to avoid duplication of geospatial data capture and to save costs. The SDI Act also underlines the importance of promoting access to spatial information. The Base Data Set Custodianship Policy makes provision for the appointment of organisations as base data set custodians, and to hold them accountable for the geospatial data they are entrusted with. The lack of working collaboratively fosters uncertainties around respective custodianship roles and responsibilities of municipalities for cadastral data within the SASDI. Cadastral data are one of the SASDI base data sets and this presented an opportunity to clarify custodianship roles and responsibilities. To achieve this, the study commenced with a literature review of the legislative and policy environment for local government, cadastral data and the SASDI. Thereafter, data were collected through questionnaires, interviews, and observation. The data were then analysed to understand how three Gauteng metropolitan municipalities, the CSG and the Gauteng Provincial SG Office, currently understand and perform their roles and responsibilities for cadastral data. Based on the results, it is recommended that municipalities should be appointed as contributing base data set custodians for cadastral data and that they should be made responsible and accountable for the management and maintenance of data sets under their jurisdiction. A coordinating custodian should be appointed to consolidate data from different municipalities into a national data set. The results of this dissertation pave the way for further studies into SASDI collaboration models and the cadastral data value chain in South Africa.