Development of Advanced Training Courses in Land Administration in Colombia

Background

The revised peace accord between the Colombian government and the FARC includes reforms in Land Administration such as the introduction of a multipurpose cadaster. The new cadaster is intended to provide updated parcel related information throughout the country, to ensure the legal certainty of land ownership and to serve as a basis for further applications such as spatial and environmental planning as well as land taxation at the municipal level (DNP, 2016).

Far-reaching institutional and organizational changes are planned for the introduction of the new multipurpose cadaster, whereby the intended operational decentralization can be compared with the Swiss cadaster model (DNP, 2019). In particular the foreseen comprehensive data collection on the entire country within a short period poses high technical and organizational demands. Appropriate processes and adjustments at different administrative and political levels must be put in place to ensure that the data collected and processed is complete, accurate, unambiguous and consistent with the existing information.

The establishment of this new framework must be accompanied by qualified personnel to ensure its correct implementation and subsequent updating. Hence the urgent need for providing suitable training programs to professionals in Colombia to obtain the necessary knowledge to cope with the new challenges of the new cadastre and other land administration related topics (such as spatial and environmental planning).
The Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO) supports the Colombian government by providing technical and technological assistance to the institutions involved in the modernization of Land Administration process. Accordingly, based on these activities, a contract between SECO and Institute of Geomatics (IGEO) of the FHNW was signed with the aim to improve sustainability of the results achieved to date, by developing appropriate offers of further education programs to be held in Colombia.

Project Objectives

The following project outcomes/objectives were defined:

• The further education offer developed contributes to the decentralization of Land Administration enables already active professionals in the field (from the public as well as form the public sector) to participate in the implementation of an efficient and sustainable Multipurpose Cadaster.
• After definitive establishment of the modernized Land Administration, the necessary training offers will be integrated into the corresponding curricula of the local training centers (at least by one of the two partner universities, or other training center), in order to contribute to the requirements of the established legal, institutional and technical framework.

Concept and implementation partners

The drafted concept presented in the inception report has been validated with the identified partner institutions as well as with SECO during a first mission to Bogota at the beginning of April 2019 and afterward completed or adapted where necessary.
The concept provides a step-by-step implementation, whereby a Certificate of Advanced Studies (CAS) will be developed and implemented in a first stage. The FHNW title awarded fulfils the requirements of a continuing education title in the Bologna system (admission requirements, duration, assessment). Parallel to this stage, various activities are being undertaken to establish and implement a continuing education program recognized by the Colombian Ministry of Education (e.g. a Specialization).

The implementation will take place in close cooperation with the Colombian partners of FHNW. These are the University Distrital José Francisco Caldas, the University Sergio Arboleda and the Research and Development Centre CIAF of the National Geographic institute IGAC, well-known institutions in Colombia and beyond.
The training offer to be developed in the first project stage is aimed at professionals who are already actively involved or wish to participate in the further development and implementation of the multipurpose cadaster and other Land Administration related topics. These professionals should be able to benefit from the further education for their personal and in general for the economic and social development in Colombia.

Kontakt/Team