Dear Mr Hawabhay,
I will be attending the upcoming meetings on Open Data Readiness
Assessment, and would like to mention a few property related data sets
that I would be keen to have published. There are three datasets in
question:
*1. Sale of property - summary, deeds, site plans*
*Held by:* Registrar General Department / LAVIMS
Every time a property (house or land) is sold, the information about the
transaction is collected by the Registrar General Department. This
includes some summary information (address, exact location, price, buyer
details, seller details), the sales contract, deeds, as well as site plans.
From my understanding, this data is currently partially available, but
it is difficult to access, not well indexed, expensive, and not on the
internet. This data was explicitly mentioned in the 2012 Implementation
and Monitoring of Open Government Data Initiatives in Mauritius
<
http://unpan1.un.org/intradoc/groups/public/documents/un-dpadm/unpan050413.pdf>
presentation, but I do not think that it has been made open in the meantime.
*
2. Any data used by the Valuation Department for valuing property prices*
*Held by:* Valuation Department
The valuation department calculates the value of property for tax
purposes. However, as far as I am aware, none of the data they use to
make their valuations is open. Opening this data would be a big
improvement in transparency. I am not sure exactly what data they use
for their calculations, but I imagine that there is an overlap with the
data mentioned in point 1 above, as well as data stored in LAVIMS. I
believe there should be much more visibility in both the process and the
data used to perform valuations.
*3. Planning application summary & details
Held by:* Individual district councils
When building a house, a property owner must submit the plans for
approval to their district council. Unlike in the UK, this data is not
published, and is reviewed in (relative) secret by the council's
planning department. I would like to see planning application published
for increased transparency.
I would appreciate if these datasets could be considered for opening up
to the public.
Regards,
Daniel Laeng.
--
Daniel Laeng
Software Developer
+230 5775 1037
Received on Wed Jun 03 2015 - 14:41:58 PST