Going Forward

The apparent infeasibility of attaining legal survey accuracy standards with community mapping has led many in the development community to argue that the best solution is for survey standards to be relaxed. But once mobile accuracy in the field can meet those standards, the conversation will shift towards persuading governments to trust community mapping data. And it should be an easy argument to make. Many governments make the formalization of land rights a priority in their development agendas but cannot afford to carry it out. This is largely because of the need to go out and collect all of the relevant geospatial and attribute data. The alternative that is emerging might look something like the TurboTax model, where the individual taxpayer combines data from various sources, some self-reported and some imported from his or her employer, and submits it electronically to a government database for processing. This new paradigm is becoming possible, thanks primarily to the advent of high-accuracy consumer positioning technology and digital identity systems capable of managing trusted, auditable data. Governments will have the opportunity to relinquish the burden of data collection and take on the role of validator and auditor.