Interview: Peter Rabley, International Land Systems

This story originally appeared in our October 8, 2010 e-magazine. Click here to subscribe.

Peter Rabley is the President of International Land Systems, which provides software to governments and development institutions for land titling and property registration. With a background in geography and economics, Rabley uses IT and mapping technologies to contribute to the field of urban development and land administration. He believes that a necessary first step in defining and securing human rights is in identifying a person and where they live.

Beyond Profit (BP): Your work involves the use of GIS technology to collect vital information about people and their surroundings. What is GIS?

Peter Rabley: A simple definition for GIS, or geographic information system, is a mapping database. Having GIS-enabled tools and databases allows you to carry out a whole range of powerful planning, analysis and management related to land, property and mankind.GIS is essential to identifying where people are in space and their relationships to what is around them.

BP: Why does mapping matter?

Rabley: A fundamental part of defining human rights is to capture a person’s name and where they live. As we take for granted in many developed nations, to do practically anything—whether you’re going to open a bank account, get phone service—you’re almost always asked for the address where you live. Everything starts from there – it is basic geography.  Governments in emerging economies countries are notoriously poor at knowing where people are. You have to know who and where people are in order to attack poverty.

BP: Using GIS, you are creating digitized records. How can you create such a system, when much of the government documentation in developing countries is not yet digital?

Rabley: Coordinating with other initiatives is important and so the digitization of property records most not be seen just as an exercise to create a property database. It can also be used for planning, administration, service delivery, public safety, etc. The information that is digitized also has a revenue value and tremendous commercial value for utility companies, cell phone companies, etc.

BP: What kinds of challenges do you face in your work?

Rabley: One challenge is that multilateral and bilateral funding agencies don’t see technology as an essential way to combat poverty. It’s much easier and more acceptable to send a consultant into the field to write a report, than to invest in technology that makes a visible and tangible difference in the field.

BP: Describe a project you’re currently working on that uses mapping technology.

Rabley: We’re working on a grant from USAID in Ghana, in partnership with the microfinance institution Sinapi Aba Trust, and Habitat for Humanity.

We’ve created a process based around our concept of para-legal titles (not formally recognized under the law) whereby we teach the Sinapi Aba loan officers to collect as much information about where a current or potential client lives, and the community they live in. We then create a property folio that is a description of their rights of use, occupation and sometimes ownership. The folio report does not confer any formal rights to that person(s), but they receive structured, accurate documentation from a trusted broker.

This process is sustainable as a business for Sinapi Aba, helps them grow their client base, and helps to maintain their information over time. For the borrower, it is a paralegal title. By following government standards and working cooperatively with government, we plan to transform the property folio into qualified titles. That would be the gold standard.

BP: When it comes to working with government, is it better to go around the authorities, or work with them?

Rabley: Sometimes, the formal authorities see this as a threat. So one of the things we’re doing is engaging the formal authorities. We’ve told them, “We’re not replacing you…we’re your foot soldiers, we’re creating valuable documents for you that you have not been able to do in the past.” The response so far has been good, but cautious.