Establishment and sustainability of a national land information system requires not only a good contractor but also functioning information technology infrastructure, structurally sound buildings to house the system, training and maintaining staff, high level government support, demand for formal land transaction services, and national level rollout. A key output of the Registry Strengthening (RS) activity was the establishment of the electronic Property Registry System (ePRS). As with many of MCC’s early land projects, Mongolia’s ePRS was not established until the final year of the compact. This left little time to train officers and test ePRS. The delay was driven by 1) a prior condition precedent that required the Government of Mongolia to provide buildings for the registry offices prior to infrastructure and information technology upgrades and equipment; and 2) the replacement of the land information system contractor. Digitization of records, which complemented Property Rights Project (PRP) activities and facilitated electronic access to land records, became a priority during implementation but was also completed post compact. In addition, the Property Registry faced a change of the government party in power along with a related change in the Ministry overseeing the Property Registry. Yet despite all these challenges, Mongolia’s ePRS was successfully sustained and in fact rolled out to additional regions post compact. People continue to use the system not only for first-time registration but also secondary transactions, which allow parcels to remain in the formal system. In comparison, MCC land information systems in Mozambique, Lesotho and Cabo Verde were not as successful.
The key to Mongolia’s ePRS success seems to be a combination of contextual and project factors. Although Mongolia is a large country, its population is small and concentrated in the main cities. As such, the bulk of land transaction demand was covered by the PRP areas, which established ePRS in the capital city and eight regional centers. The original Property Registry also had an existing electronic record keeping system (TRIADA) along with related information technology infrastructure. Although the Property Registry moved from the Ministry of Construction and Urban Development to the Ministry of Justice, the move placed the Property Registry under the well-functioning General Authority of State Registration (GASR), which had recently benefited from global donor support. GASR was supportive of the PRP and the ePRS, including incorporating the digitized data into its electronic kiosks for easy access to land records. All land registry offices also fell under the autonomy of the national registry so there was not the added dimension of individual municipality governance and independence, which can be a constraining factor in larger countries. There was also a complimentary human resource and financial operational review of GASR that assessed and established improved procedures within GASR. In addition, the PRP funded an awareness campaign around the necessity to fully register land, as well as an existing land market which valued a formal land title. Together, these factors led to demand for registration and use of ePRS.