Land administration has long been executed through state-based agencies such as cadastral departments, land registry offices, ministries of land, or local governments with their own analogue or digital data repositories. These organizations do not act in a vacuum, but within larger institutional fields and forces. The broader environment of land governance, in which public organizations operate, is characterized by the interactions of multiple state and non-state actors, formal and informal practices, a multitude of regulatory frameworks and increasing global interconnectivity. This environment has been witnessing public sector reforms and increased adoption of (geo)Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), including automatization techniques, mobile device generated data, crowdsourcing and advanced remote sensing technologies. In many places more established forms of organizing meet latest technological developments. While some organizations are beginning to digitize paper-based workflows, others may function through highly automated and digitized processes. At the same time information technologies and digital data are not merely neutral tools, but they reflect, transport and transform the practices and values of organizations and institutional fields.
It is important therefore to understand and learn how to describe, explain, and assess organizational change in response to changing environments, (geo-)ICT implementation, and related forms of data sharing, uses and dissemination. In this course, these socio-technical processes are addressed from social science and from applied technology angles