Improving Efficiency of Public Cadastral Procedures through Customer-orientation

The emerging challenge in the public sector in most European countries is to offer services matching the needs of the users of the services and their expectations with fewer resources, for instance due to reduced tax revenues and manpower. To overcome this challenge, new approaches in the development of public services are required.
This dissertation presents approaches that aim to improve a public cadastral
procedure on the principle of including customer-orientation into a public process. It also describes how the improvement affects process efficiency. The research focuses on public cadastral procedures by utilising Finnish cadastral procedures as case examples and comparing them to international practices. The studied cases include land consolidation and subdivision procedures applied to both rural and urban areas.
The approaches are studied in multiple cases through abductive reasoning. The
study is constructed on a juridical and a customer-orientation framework, where the former is based on legal research and the latter on models of customer-orientation in the public sector. The investigation includes comparison of international public cadastral procedures, especially land consolidation, methods implemented in the procedures, like voluntary participation, and the status of land lessors. To gather empirical data, participants in the aforementioned processes and experienced academics and specialists who have expertise in such processes were interviewed in a structured and a semi-structured way.
The dissertation contributes to the field of public land administration (cadastral)
procedures as a public service and its aim of responding efficiently to citizens’ needs. This research provides novel insights into how to enhance customer-orientation in public cadastral procedures by adapting different approaches, for instance voluntary, co-operative, and co-creative, in procedures. The study suggests that re-evaluating the ways of working is an important factor alongside the national development of, for instance, reforming legislation and advancing digitalisation to gain a relevant impact on the efficiency of the public sector.