The Land Management Bureau (LMB) of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) has fully incorporated the Land Administration Management System (LAMS) databases of 16 local and community environment and natural resource bureaus in the Philippines into their corresponding regional offices.
The LMB is a policy-making body of the DENR tasked with the efficient and effective management and administration of the country’s alienable and disposable public lands. While LAMS is a computerised information system designed for quick and straightforward land information processing, tracking, and retrieval, it consolidates the country’s land data and records. Therefore, the DENR-NCR and DENR-Calabarzon Regional LAMS databases were merged into LMB-LAMS.
LMB has also combined and examined 19 towns undergoing Digital Cadastral Database Cleansing through separate DENR regional offices. LMB Director Emelyne Talabis adds that the agency is proud of its achievements on essential programmes this year, which resulted in enhanced delivery of land-related services to Filipinos.
“We are pleased with our successes this year, and we will strive to enhance our services through digital transformation, staff development, and policy research, among other things, to create a better and more effective system for land surveys and titling,” she said.
According to Talabis, these accomplishments are rooted in LMB’s policy priorities of evidence-based and socially responsible land governance. The Land Management Circular (LMC) No. 2022-001, entitled Guidelines on the Use of Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) in the Conduct of Control and Land Surveys, was issued by the LMB in February of last year.
It instructs geodetic engineers on using GNSS as a supplemental and alternative instrument in land surveys. It was mandated by an amendment to DENR Administrative Order 2021-38, also known as the Republic Act 11573 Implementing Rules and Regulations, also known as An Act Improving the Confirmation Process for Imperfect Land Titles.
The LMB also provided land area certification for 31 local government units (LGUs) for Internal Revenue Allotment purposes, handled six legal land issues, and certified and transferred to the Registry of Deeds 69 Deeds of Sale/Deeds of Conveyance of Taguig lots.
The LMB continues to validate the 16 regions to ensure the seamless execution of its Rapid Land Tenure Appraisal programme. The DENR has inked 219 cooperation agreements with LGUs to date. The LMB issued 13,462 agricultural and 23,290 residential-free patents nationwide from January to November 2022.
Furthermore, LMB has implemented ground-breaking policies to achieve more efficient and effective land administration and management in the country by 2022. LMC 2022-002 was also issued by the LMB, which defined the eligibility for free agricultural patent applicants and the procedures for posting notice of free patent application.
The LMB also released LMC 2022-004 in March 2022, which provides “Procedures on the Selection and Establishment of Calibration Baselines for Survey Instrument Testing and Registration.” This circular also delegated registration renewal and ownership transfer of the calibration foundation to DENR regional offices.
DENR Administrative Order 2022-13 delegated the Chief of Surveys and Mapping as the approval committee for overall survey plans submitted to DENR regional offices to speed up survey approval and verification plans for public and private lands.
On the other hand, Vietnam has made a related digitisation endeavour to link the land database with the National Population Database. It has signed a guideline on work cooperation with the Ministry of Public Security. Connecting the land database with the national population system has yielded modest first results.
Under Prime Minister Decision No. 06, a strategy to build applications for a population database, e-identification, and e-authentication was approved. According to the plan, in addition to the database and applications, citizen ID cards with electronic chips would be used for administrative procedures, online public service provision, socioeconomic expansion, and digital citizen development.
According to the Department of Information Technology and Data on Natural Resources and Environment, 56 of 63 provinces and cities were linked to databases of 316 of 705 district-level units and 4,076 of 10,599 commune-level units, totalling more than 24 million land plots.
