Floss in Cadastre and Land Registration

Open-source policy

Whilst there is no formal government policy in Ghana regarding the use of 

open-source software, there is every indication that the Government of Ghana 

supports efforts in that direction. Speaking at a free and open-source software 

media training conference in Ghana in April of 2007, the then Minister for Com-

munication noted that the government had already mandated the Ghana-India 

Kofi Annan Centre of Excellence in ICT to spearhead the national consultation pro-

cess on an open-source policy and to provide an initial draft document for consid-

eration. There is, however, no evidence that this consultation process has been 

concluded and whether a policy document has been prepared.

The Minister hinted that the use of FLOSS was important because it  allowed the 

Government to reduce costs and retain ownership of its own technology. Impor-

tantly, he noted that relevant courses in open-source, including  courses tailored to 

specific client needs, will be offered at the Kofi Annan Centre. 

It is possible that the transfer of knowledge underlying the geospatial tools 

used in the OSCAR project may be dovetailed to fit within this process, maintain-

ing consistency with the stance taken by the Government in general. Hence, if 

there is passage of a formal policy on FLOSS in Ghana, the OSCAR project will be 

entirely consistent with this.

Currently there is no formal mandated requirement within the LSAs in Ghana to 

adopt specific land-related standards or to require agencies to use one form of ICT 

over another. However, informally, there has been a general convergence within 

Ghana to the use of a small number of proprietary software packages (especially 

ArcGIS, although Microstation is used for drafting work, and one or two other 

 minor GIS packages are used). In particular, the relatively high profile of the 

 Environmental Systems Research Institute’s (ESRI) suite of tools across a number of 

the LSAs suggests that any FLOSS venture should maintain, at least in the short 

term, compatibility with ESRI’s informal de facto industry standards, such as the 

use of shapefiles or the ability to exchange data with personal or file geodata-

bases.

In the longer term, the prohibitive acquisition costs of ESRI software and the 

need to pay high annual support and maintenance fees in order to remain up to 

date, are significant disincentives to follow this path indefinitely, especially when 

computerized land information systems is to be deployed nationwide in the na-

tional LIS. There is also an implied dependence on external consultants whenever 

customization of any sort is required.

---

78