Kirinyaga: The Kirinyaga county government has established a Geographic Information System (GIS) lab to improve service delivery at the local department of lands. The lab, which is pivotal to digitization of land records, will enable the County Government to streamline operations and enhance customer service, transparency, and accuracy and will go a long way in eliminating fraud and grabbing of public land.
According to Kenya News Agency, the GIS lab has been established in collaboration with the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) with the aim of modernizing land governance processes and promotion of sustainable land development. Kirinyaga is predominantly an agricultural county which heavily depends on natural resources with land being a fundamental asset for economic growth.
The County Executive for Lands, Samuel Kanjobe, said that the system will strengthen the county’s ability to manage land governance effectively and enhance planning and decision-making on land matters. He said that the lab has the requisite hardware which includes computers, workstations, a modern plotter, and software to enable the digitization process, adding that the department is now moving to data collection in plots and land in at least 135 market and trading centers in the county.
“The process will include picking geographic coordinates of our lands and create a database including ownership details, sizes, and land use,” he said, adding that the GIS will minimize issues of double allocation, ownership disputes and also enhance precision in revenue collection. The County Director of Physical Planning, Murage Muraguri, said that the department is in the process of converting the analogue data to digital format that will be compatible with the GIS, noting that thereafter, customers will be linked to the system so as to enable them access some of the services through their digital devices.
GIS is a technology that integrates hardware, software, and data that enables the storage, management, analysis, and modeling of geospatial data that enables decision making in matters such as urban planning, disaster management, environmental conservation, and commerce. The County Government Act 2012 mandates county governments to establish GIS-based database systems and prepare GIS-based database County Spatial Plans.