Urban and Rural Land Registers (BR0107)

Commitment 8: Implement urban and rural base registers (National Rural Properties Cadaster – CNIR) on an integrated model, providing data to society, for the operationalization of the Territorial Information Managing National System (SINTER).
Lead government institution National Institute of Colonization and Agrarian Reform - INCRA
Civil servant in charge for implementing at lead government institution Paulo Farinha
Position - Department Deputy Director for Planning of Land-ownership Structure
E-mail paulo.farinha@incra.gov.br
Telephone (61) 3411-7379/7138
Other involved actors Government National Institute of Colonization and Agrarian Reform - INCRA
Special Secretariat for Familiar Agriculture and Agrarian Development – SEAD
Ministry of Environment - MMA
Federal Revenue Office
Civil Society Forestry Code Observatory – OCF
University of Campinas - Unicamp
Brazilian Association of Agrarian Reform - ABRA
National Confederation of Agriculture - CNA
United Nations Organization for Agriculture and Nutrition at Latin America and Caribbean - FAO
Institute for Environment Research on Amazon - IPAM
Institute for Forest and Agriculture Management and Certification - IMAFLORA
Status quo or problem/issue to be addressed Lack of information over land issues, resulting multiplicity on registrations.
Main objective Integrate data bases produced by public administration bodies on a single registry, urban, rural, ensuring citizens access to the data.
Commitment short description Promote initiatives that enable a unified registry, complete, updated and georeferenced over the urban and rural land properties.
OGP Challenge addressed by the Commitment Increase information availability about governmental activities.
Support civic participation.
Increase access to new technologies in order to promote disclosing and accountability processes.
Commitment relevance Promote effective knowledge of land situation in Brazil for society and public managers.
Goal Share registration systems produced by various bodies in a same environment in order to reduce costs and align information.
Situation Initiated in October 2018.
Results description Not available.
Implemented until July/2020

Verifiable and measurable milestones to fulfill the Commitment Start date: End date: Responsible:
1. Chief of Staff Office involvement on the discussion about the establishment of the CNIR
10/01/2018
11/30/2018 RFB*
INCRA*
CNA
2. Definition made by INCRA and Federal Revenue about cartographic information hosting at CNIR
10/01/2018
11/30/2018
RFB*
INCRA*
3. Government presentation about data categories that form CNIR as well as the associated data bases.
02/01/2019
03/31/2019
RFB*
INCRA*
4. Presentation by Civil Society about CNIR data demands as well as to associated bases.
04/01/2019
04/10/2019 OCF*
ABRA
5. Establishment of a Civil Society and Government Committee to follow up the implementation of the public interface from CNIR

05/01/2019

05/30/2019
OCF*
INCRA
RFB
6. Accomplishment of a workshop to present and discuss the public interface of CNIR with citizens.

06/01/2019

12/31/2019 INCRA*
RFB*
MMA
SEAD
CNA
7. Propose an urban registry model 01/01/2019 06/30/2019 RFB*
SEAD e INCRA
8. Conclusion of the specifications, definitions and implementation of SIGEF 2.0
10/01/2018
06/30/2019 INCRA*
SEAD*
9. Promotion of a partnership for the accomplishment of a study to analyze initiatives from the Public Administration related to the urban and rural registry, with a presentation of proposals of technical solutions for the establishment of a national policy registry, preferably by specialized consultation.

10/01/2018

06/30/2019
SEAD*
RFB
INCRA
FAO
OCF
CNA

Design Report

8. Land Transparency

Language of the commitment as it appears in the action plan:

“Integrate data bases produced by public administration bodies on a single registry, urban, rural, ensuring citizens access to the data.”

8.1. Chief of Staff Office involvement on the discussion about the establishment of the CNIR [56]

8.2. Definition made by INCRA [57] and Federal Revenue about cartographic information hosting at CNIR [58]

8.3. Government presentation about data categories that form CNIR as well as the associated data bases

8.4. Presentation by Civil Society about CNIR data demands as well as to associated bases

8.5. Establishment of a Civil Society and Government Committee to follow up the implementation of the public interface from CNIR

8.6. Accomplishment of a workshop to present and discuss the public interface of CNIR with citizens

8.7. Propose an urban registry model

8.8. Conclusion of the specifications, definitions and implementation of SIGEF 2.0 [59]

8.9. Promotion of a partnership for the accomplishment of a study to analyze initiatives from the Public Administration related to the urban and rural registry, with a presentation of proposals of technical solutions for the establishment of a national policy registry, preferably by specialized consultation.

Start Date: October 2018                                                                           End Date: July 2020

Editorial note: to see the complete text, visit https://www.opengovpartnership.org/documents/brazil-national-action-plan-2018-2020/.

Context and Objectives

This commitment aims to consolidate land information and make it available to government and civil society. The commitment will produce a unified, complete, updated, and geo-referenced registry of urban and rural land properties. During the co-creation workshops, participants noted that land registries are fragmented, closed, and generally not geo-referenced. These insufficient registries do not enable (or even allow) government or civil society to monitor public policies on land registration. [60] Civil society analyses have documented the problem, emphasizing clear challenges for social control on issues that include land rights, minority rights, and environmental rights. [61] Problems include the cost of information access, consistency, cases of possible corruption, and impunity of public servants and others involved in land registry processes.

The IRM researcher interviewed three stakeholders about this commitment. They voiced a desire to increase the culture of open data among public servants dealing with land registration (Paulo Aparecido Farinha, INCRA); [62] the need to promote social control and open data transparency, as both are currently lacking (Vitor Bukvar Fernandes, Unicamp); [63] and the need to connect civil society organization efforts to public servants currently in charge of land registration (Ana Paula Valdiones, Observatório do Código Florestal). [64]

The commitment proposes the development of a draft proposal, led by the government, to create a new registry (Milestones 8.1−8.3). That draft would be followed by civil society feedback, including the establishment of a civic participation mechanism to implement the proposal (8.4−8.6). The activities would conclude with the final design for an urban land registry and its launch (8.7−8.9).

The commitment is specific enough to be verifiable and is relevant to two OGP values: access to information and civic participation. The commitment addresses access to information by proposing an urban registry model, and it addresses civic participation by designing the model through civil society consultation.

The commitment has a moderate potential impact, mostly due to the existing low level of open government practices in land management, as reported by government and civil society interviewees. Gains in transparency are important, particularly due to the national scope of the database, the novelty of the data made available, its open format, and the removal of charges to access it. The commitment is, nevertheless, limited in scope, as it does not include any provisions to promote the adoption of the registry. To achieve a greater potential impact, the commitment should also seek to promote the registry’s adoption.

Next steps

The commitment is highly relevant, although its milestones, if completed, are of less interest for future action plans. Integrating rural land information addresses the only starred commitment of the second action plan (promoting land transparency in rural Brazil) and the commitment that received the most votes by civil society during the consultation phase. As reported by the IRM researcher in the final report of the previous action plan, the rural database was identified as a major improvement in access to information in Brazil. This was due to the scope of changes it brought. Detailed information was organized and provided to all rural areas of Brazil for the first time. The database also brought down the costs of corruption and inefficiencies associated with the previous process. This commitment can expand the previous database with urban data and promote open government practices related to access to information.

To increase this commitment’s potential impact, future milestones should focus on the uses of the information registry system. That is, once the information is made public, what are the policies of government that will be improved by the use of the data, and what civil society and private sector activities will be improved by the new portal? It is also important that the registry continue to be monitored, that civil society participate in such monitoring, and that the unified registry design be implemented.

Transitional Results Report

Commitment 8. Land transparency

Completion: LIMITED

For details regarding the implementation and early results of this commitment, see Section 2.3.

Commitment 8: Land transparency

Aim of the commitment

This commitment was highlighted as one of the noteworthy commitments in the IRM Design Report. Its main objective was to ensure transparency in land tenure by consolidating and publishing the available data. Specifically, it aimed to integrate urban and rural property registry databases produced by various public administration bodies into a single registry through the National Territorial Information Management System (SINTER). This initiative was crucial in promoting a comprehensive understanding of the land tenure situation in Brazil. However, implemented activities did not yield objectively verifiable outcomes. Therefore, there is no evidence of early results to report.

Did it open government?

Did not change

Implementation of this commitment was limited and generated marginal early results, which can be attributed to limitations on civic participation opportunities in consolidating and updating the land registry.

Stakeholders faced various challenges to generate meaningful outcomes following changes in the administrative structure, composition, and competencies of organizations and decision-making bodies participating in the commitment. Provisional Measure No. 870/2019 altered the structure and basic organization of the presidency and ministries. [115] This provisional measure underwent changes and was further institutionalized into Law No. 13844 in 2019. [116] These changes also had a direct impact on land tenure, such as in the regularization of the territorial rights of ‘quilombola’ [117] communities that were recognized in Article 68 of the Transitional Constitutional Provisions (ADCT) of the Federal Constitution of 1988. The measure/law opened the door for the government to appropriate this community’s lands, given their lack of land titles. [118]

Decree No. 9.759 of 2019, [119] further presented challenges to the commitment’s implementation. It revoked and established guidelines, rules, and limitations for collegiates bodies [120] in the federal public administration, leading to the dissolution of several bodies of political deliberation that included civil society, and hindering social control over government processes and practices.

In its self-assessment report, the government stated that five of the commitment’s nine milestones were completed, while the other four recorded limited progress. [121] However, these completed milestones were not based on delivering final outcomes but rather activities, such as a meeting in 2019 to present demands and discuss the integration of the National Rural Property Registry (CNIR) that involved the Civil House (i.e., Chief of Staff Ministry) (Milestone 1), [122] documents with demands from civil society and government responses (Milestone 4), [123] and meetings and workshops for presenting and discussing the CNIR structure and public interface implementation with civil society (Milestones 3 and 6). [124] Additionally, given Decree No. 9.759 of 2019 limitations, it was not possible to establish a collegiate committee to monitor the implementation of the integration of databases. [125] Instead, a series of official meetings were held with civil society and government institutions. [126]

Completed milestones of this commitment mainly focused on discussions and workshops. They lacked tangible results pertaining to land transparency issues in Brazil. Meanwhile, milestones regarding rural properties which have the highest potential for results, recorded the least amount of progress. For example, Milestone 8, which was responsible for defining and implementing the Land Management System (SIGEF) 2.0 system, was reported to have only 20% completion. [127] This low implementation was in part given a lack of consensus on how to integrate the databases and where to host the SIGEF (Milestone 2), vendors’ hiring delays, unrealistic implementation timelines, and shifting the project to another platform initiative. [128]

Land tenure transparency remains an important policy to pursue in Brazil, even more critically considering the recently documented transgressions to certain communities. [129] The commitment was also limited in civic participation opportunities given the restricting norms in the Bolsonaro administration. As these measures have been officially revoked, [130] the IRM encourages retaking activities that impact land tenure transparency and protection with more active civic participation.