will, along with other registration systems, deliver changes to and retrieve them from the central database. Once the new system is in full-scale production, it is anticipated that process times will be reduced by 20 to 30 percent and that maintenance costs for the more integrated system will be lower. Belgium’s National Cadastre Supports E-government The national cadastral system of Belgium is maintained by the Patrimony Documentation Department inside Federal Public Service (FPS) Finance. It contains the records of the country’s 9.4 million land parcels and 1 million registered strata or condominium units. Its cadastre was initiated more than 200 years ago during the French Revolution, when Belgium’s land tax and the general cadastre procedures for governing land information were created. In 2003, FPS Finance began implementing a new cadastral system called CadMAP. The purpose of CadMAP was to migrate from old analog cadastral map sheets to a digital cadastral map files system, supporting the update and management of the vector cadastre map files and improving the quality of the cadastral maps. To meet these goals, ArcGIS was deployed in FPS Finance’s central office, as well as 10 provincial cadastre offices and 300 local survey offices. FPS Finance set up a web software solution using ArcGIS to give users intranet access to digital cadastral maps inside the new centralized file management system. With a customized GIS application at their fingertips, staff at local offices can now create and update local cadastral plans and submit them to the provincial offices. Concurrently, provincial offices can use a customized interface to make extensive modifications and quality enhancements to the plans submitted by local offices. Meanwhile, the central office uses its own customized interfaces for official cadastral extraction and cadastral sheet printing. Attributes and layers in CadMAP include 9 C O Vthe solution inT O R Iand 28 regional offices. E R S its central E S European Cadastres and National Mapping Agencies Using Esri Technology Albania Austria Azerbaijan Belarus Belgium Bulgaria Croatia Cyprus Czech Republic Denmark Estonia France Georgia Germany Greece Hungary Iceland Ireland Italy Latvia Lithuania Luxembourg Malta Moldova Montenegro Netherlands Norway Portugal Republic of Macedonia Romania Russia Serbia Slovakia Slovenia Spain Sweden Switzerland Turkey Ukraine United Kingdom cadastral boundaries, parcel numbers, buildings, administrative boundaries, streets, rivers, bridges, parcel monuments, and municipality monuments. Managing a database with 39,000 cadastre map sheets, 200,000 changes per year, and several hundred users was a challenge, but CadMAP was successful, and FPS Finance migrated from the old paper management to the new digital system while updating and continually enhancing the quality of the cadastral data. Following the success of CadMAP, FPS Finance launched the second phase of the project. This extension to CadMAP involved migration from the desktop file system of separate map sheets to an ArcGIS geodatabase with extended web solutions, providing improved access for existing intranet users and wider access over the Internet for external users, such as notaries, surveyors, and the citizens of Belgium. Bulgaria’s Unified Information System of the Cadastre and Property Register In Bulgaria, the cadastre and property registers are the responsibility of two different organizations— the Agency of Geodesy, Cartography, and Cadastre and the Registers Agency. In some European countries, the two responsibilities are combined within a single agency, but in Bulgaria, a different organizational approach is taken. The two functions continue under different administrations, but through the implementation of an integrated information system for the cadastre and property registers, the two agencies are able to realize many of the benefits of having a unified agency. In 2003, the Agency of Geodesy, Cartography, and Cadastre selected ArcGIS technology for its cadastral information system and implemented The system supports all aspects of the cadastral workflow, from data input (from CAD files) through data management, visualization, and extraction of statutory documents in either hard or soft copy to ongoing maintenance of the cadastral data, including the full history of changes. Subsequently, this agency initiated a joint project with the Registers Agency to implement a new integrated cadastre and property register system. The new system combines the cadastral parcel data with the ownership and legal information for each property within one database at the central level while allowing distributed updating from the local cadastre and registry offices. This partnership approach has delivered a number of cost efficiencies and other more qualitative benefits. For example, all users now have access to the same land and property information, and all can be confident that they are working with the latest version of the data. The new integrated system is now of great importance to many GIS developments and users within Bulgaria and is laying the groundwork for much greater cooperation between public administration and private business. For more information, contact Nick Land, Esri (e-mail: nland@esri.com). Lithuania’s State Enterprise Centre of Registers relies on its ArcGIS software-based KADAGIS. The system features more than 50 user-friendly functions that speed up operations, quality control, and data entry into the cadastral database. Submit Your Story to ArcNews Many of the user success stories in ArcNews are written by our users and business partners. We look forward to receiving yours. If you would like your article to be considered for publication, please follow the article submission guidelines at esri.com/news/ arcnews/submission.html Bulgaria’s CadMAP system contains data on 9.4 million land parcels.