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THE SUCCESS STORY BEGINS - THE SWEDISH LAND REGISTRY DISSRUPTED BY THE BLOCKCHAIN TECHNOLOGY

Sweden is a country that welcomes the development of new technologies. The Swedish Land Registry is more than 400 years old, which is being developed from rituals to pen and paper to mainframe computing to centralized database systems all built on secure and sound processes and officials.

Sweden is the most progressive country that is in putting land registries on a blockchain. The Swedish land registry - Lantmäteriet (the national mapping, cadastral and land registration authority) - is one of the first public agencies to test using blockchain technology for transacting property sales. The agency has partnered with telecommunication firms and blockchain technology companies to develop a blockchain-based platform for transacting real estate deals.

Nowadays in Sweden, the current delay from the signing of a purchase contract to the registration of the sale can be as long as three to six or nine months. This seems surprising, since Sweden is a developed country and an early adopter of digital technology for administration. But even in Sweden, real estate sales and registration are still mostly based on manual paperwork, which represents a point of congestion. It seems likely that only a full deployment of digital automation, which can be enabled by blockchain technology and smart contracts, could significantly speed up the process. This system eliminates or improves over 80% of the steps required for a real estate transaction, significantly shortening the process, saving time, and reducing the possibility of human errors in a number of workflows.

The process would be much faster with the new blockchain system. Than the process could be hours and the deal could be signed and registered even when the buyer or seller is not physically present in the country.

The agency has been testing ways to record property transactions on a blockchain since June 2016. The implementation of the blockchain technology could save the Swedish taxpayer over €100 million a year by eliminating paperwork, reducing fraud, and speeding up transactions.

The blockchain technology for property transactions is a great platform for the future and it is solution with a proven track record, delivering things that many even did not think were possible.

The Swedish project undoubtedly inspire another projects around the world. In fact, agencies and governments in another countries such as the USA, India and Republic of Georgia also are experimenting with blockchain technology for land registries.

There is another success story, not to be surprised In Republic of Georgia, the National Agency of Public Registry has stored one million titles on a blockchain. “This important project will show that governments that transfer their property registries to a blockchain-based system can establish a more transparent and well-recorded system that ultimately benefits the people and advances economic opportunity for all”, said Hernando de Soto – Economist and founder and president of the Institute for Liberty and Democracy. By successfully integrating blockchain technology into their land registry, the Georgian government has completed the first step towards pioneering blockchain technology. The same technology will also be implemented across other government registries in Georgia.

In India, it is building a blockchain-based solution to record property deals. It is worth noting that Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi recently stated that blockchain and Internet of Things technologies will have a deep impact on the way "we live and work" and require "rapid adaptation" of the workplace.

But what is the current situation in Bulgaria?

Keeping track of who owns what pieces of land is still a low-tech work, involving a lot of hand signed documents, envelopes and couriers. In short - many institutionalized and private intermediaries are involved, that prevent people of saving time and money, whose role in the confidence and security of commercial and civilian turnover can seriously be called into question.

There are also good news - we are lucky, because we have a functioning land registry at all. According to the World Bank estimates that 70% of the world’s population lacks access to land titling.

Bulgarian Geodesy, Cartography and Cadastre Agency has a cadastral administrative information system. In fact, this system is still very sluggish and slow and the implementation of Blockchain technology is very distant, but surely not impossible.

It is undisputed that many changes in a disruptive way are going to take place in Bulgaria aiming to save time and money of the people. How these changes look like…remains to be shaped by the citizens – the future is now.

Referenses:

1.    http://ica-it.org/pdf/Blockchain_Landregistry_Report.pdf;
2.    https://chromaway.com/landregistry/;
3.    https://chromaway.com/papers/Blockchain_Landregistry_Report_2017.pdf;
4.    https://www.lantmateriet.se/contentassets/8d2b5d7647634c02a329b01e46e61071/the-land-registry-in-the-block-chain---testbed-2017.pdf;
5.    https://blockchan.ge/blockchange-land-registry.pdf.