The Land Registry does not have the best reputation in the eyes of the public. Currently, the cadastre has been down for three days and the cadastral departments are working only in a limited mode. There have been reports that the cadastre has been the target of a cyber-attack and even speculation that the cadastre has lost all its data. The authorities are scant on information, but we know that the police are already dealing with the case.
Below I describe the current state of the Land Registry and some of the problems that may have caused the current land registry outage.
Minutes – missed deadlines, excessive formality
Hundreds of thousands of contracts arrive at the cadastre every year, which must be registered within the legal deadline. A standard fee of EUR 100 is currently paid for each application (draft). Some district offices respect the deadline for making deposits, others do not. From my own experience, I know that filling in the offices with the missing ‘depositors’ is often slow and inflexible. Staff are absent, they work under stress for low pay, fees are returned and people find various side roads to get basic things done.
The procedure for registering contracts under the Cadastral Act is also not ideal and is improving only slowly. Its extreme formality often unnecessarily delays the acquisition of ownership.
Complex legislation, poor quality selection procedures, low salaries and, as a consequence, a lower professional level of depositors and recorders are all phenomena that create an ideal environment for corrupt behaviour.
Unmanaged computerisation – the reason why the cadastre has a blackout?
Cadastre employees are used to attending training once every 5 years on a new program that is supposed to move the cadastre “forward”, but after the training, the ground sort of crumbles and they continue to use the applications at work from the 90s 20th century. At least that’s how it was until 2017, when I left the cadastre.
The cadastral law shows an effort to gradually computerise the entire cadastral procedure, but in practice it is done in a way that makes the work of officials even more complicated. There is an obvious contradiction between the image of the cadastre from the point of view of the citizen and that of the official. The citizen mostly sees the positives – new websites and the possibility of sending an application to the cadastre from home. Officials, on the other hand, have outdated programmes that do not make the job any easier.
Procurement of applications by the cadastre department sometimes gave the impression that the purpose of the new programs is not to make work easier, but to spend money. This is confirmed by the fact that the Office of Geodesy, Cartography and Cadastre of the Slovak Republic had to return money for illegal procurement in the past (see article). A good example of mismanagement and waste is the so-called “envelope machine” – a device for sending decisions that cost a lot of money but worked only for a short time. It is not yet clear whether the launch of the envelope machine or its closure was the greater success.
Are there no backups?
It would therefore not be surprising if an ineptly managed department with outdated equipment could not withstand a cyber attack and lost all its data. This would mean that the department does not have sufficient data backed up. This would be a serious managerial failure on the part of the CCDC, but it would also be a failure of a fundamental function of the state – the protection of citizens’ property. Without cadastral data, citizens would have difficulty proving their ownership and there would be room for enrichment of land of “inactive” owners, similar to the 1990s when cadastral data was incomplete and many fraudulent enrichments occurred (see article on this topic).
At the same time, it would destroy several decades of work on the creation of cadastral data and, of course, the huge expense needed to recreate it.
Abolition of paper certificates of title
Despite the fact that the title deeds are to be maintained in electronic and paper form according to the decree, a decade ago the Office of the State Property Commissioner issued a guideline instructing the authorities to suspend the updating of the title deeds in paper form. This guideline is in direct contradiction with Section 7 of Decree No 461/2009 Coll. It can also be concluded that the management of the Office of the State Property Register does not always act professionally and in accordance with the law. Offices that have followed this guideline and not the decree will have even greater problems in the event that the cadastre has actually lost the data.
“Dead spots” have already been created in the past
The period of socialism had a major impact on the registration of real estate, when ownership was partially discontinued (especially in the 1950s-1960s). Further, properties were sold, inheritances were negotiated, but many of these legal changes were no longer registered. This began to create dead spots in the records. It is a difficult task to investigate the chronology of ownership relations and to complete the register so that all properties and changes are entered in it. The fact that it has not yet been fully achieved is testimony to its difficulty. New owners and maps are added to the cadastre by means of the so-called ROEP (Register of Restored Land Registration), often superficially and with errors. The fact that each cadastral area is registered on two different maps (cadastral map and map of the designated area) does not contribute to the clarity of cadastral registration.
Other cadastre problems
There are more problems in the cadastre, and I will mention some others that came to my mind:
- non-incorporation of some (especially civil engineering structures) and impossibility of their sale,
- confusing definitions and formulations in the Cadastral Act (e.g. the definition of land or § 79i),
- it is often not possible to determine the extent of urban land under the administration of the land community from the title deeds,
- confusing entries on the title deeds, e.g. the title of acquisition in the form of “Purchase contract No. V 223/2010 of 2.2.2009”, where the date does not correspond to the date of conclusion of the contract, but to the date of authorisation of the entry, and the number “V 223/2010” is not the number of the contract, but the number of the entry (or the number of the decision on authorisation of the entry).
A few recommendations in conclusion
In the past, it has been shown that changing laws and guidelines on property registration should be done very carefully, so changes should only be made gradually and after careful consideration. Instead of completely new laws (a new cadastral law has recently been drafted), it would be much more beneficial to cut corners and make a few minor adjustments.
The current model of local government, which was introduced in 2013 and has exacerbated the staffing and material needs of the authorities, also needs to be changed.
It is also necessary to consider whether to replace the paper cadastre documentation with the electronic one or to keep both at the same time. It is also necessary to continue with cadastral proceedings in the traditional paper form, otherwise the authorities will be inaccessible to computer illiterate and less well-off citizens. However, the aim should be the opposite – to improve access to the authorities. This is often forgotten.
