GI Technology for Developing Countries

Quality Standards Information Technology (QSIT) is an ICT consulting company which focuses upon developing specialised, custom, enterprise-level GIS, cadastral and telecom applications. The company has established a strong stand in the ICT field, becoming a GIS leader in Egypt and the Middle East & Northern Africa (MENA) region.

Founded in 1994, QSIT is a member of ALKAN Group, which was established in 1974 by its chairman Mohamed M. Nosseir. Since then there has been a great evolution in terms of revenue, number of employees and scope of work. As revenues have grown from 3 million Egyptian Pounds (US$ 517,118.62) in 1994 to total revenue of 20 million Egyptian Pounds (US$ 3,449,301.5) in 2004, the number of employees grew from 28 in 1994 to 107 employees in 2005. We are now business partners with ESRI, SPSS and Lantmäteriet (the Swedish cadastre).

Comprehensive GIS
The company mission has evol-ved in such a way as to develop comprehensive GIS applications that enable users to efficiently manage, use and serve information to make a difference in the world around them. We also provide consultancy, implementation, training and technical-support services to ensure that our customers get what they expect. Our management philosophy is based on four main elements: delegation, transparency, constructive positive criticism and sharing. We chose these elements because we believe that their combination is the main way that will directly lead to unconditional employee loyalty, which in turn becomes the main motivator for employees to achieve their targets. Further, the organisational structure is flat, because we think that flat organisations are more efficiently managed and achieve better results.

International Scope
The boom that has been witnessed in the regional market has led us to realise the potential in Egypt, the Middle East and Africa. We have adapted to this and over the few past years offered GIS solutions across target markets such as government, oil & gas, survey, military, defence, environment and business organisations. Some projects that have added to expertise and specialisation are the implementation of Cadastral Information Management Systems for a variety of nations; the first of these was the Egyptian Survey Authority that aimed at having an efficient integrated digital Land Information System (LIS) based on cadastral data. The same project has been implemented for the General Survey Section (GSS) of Qatar.

Integrated LIS
The main aim of ESA/ECIM was to have an efficient, integrated digital Land Information System (LIS) based on cadastral data. ESA had a great need to implement the LIS within a robust nationwide solution for national land registration management (See Figure 1). The main problem of Cadastral Information Management in Egypt lay in the fact that cadastral data existed as separate islands of data in different formats and within a non-scalable system. This project involved the first-time implementation of ArcCadastre, with a fully localised interface, in the Middle East. We now provide ESA with a scalable enterprise solution for Cadastral Information Management nationwide, a land information system for cadastral services and its link to land registration and land taxation.

The Future
Our future target is to penetrate more markets in Northern and Eastern Africa, in addition to the Gulf area, such as Libya, where we already have a branch, Sudan, Namibia, KSA, Bahrain, United Arab Emirates and others. The main focus is on implementing our solutions in the developing countries in order to support them in utilising their resources in the best possible way. Being in a developing country and having implemented a cadastral information management system and witnessed the major impact that such a system had on the Egyptian economy, the company is keen to repeat such an experience across the region.
Cadastral information, land & property registration management systems have been proved to be key factors in the prosperity of the economy of any country. Such systems enable nations to wisely utilise their resources of land and property in the sense of establishing ownership of rights in real property, valuation of these rights, creating accurate taxation systems and thus underpinning real national and regional planning. Moreover,
cadastral management systems support nations in transferring solid land and real property assets into liquid money, thus enhancing the circulation of the country's monetary resources, the thing that directly impacts its macro economy, enhances its wellbeing and provides a foundation for stability and prosperity.
QSIT, with its collaboration with international business partners, has contributed to further solidifying the vision of developing a unified cadastral and land registry system in developing countries. This has been attained by utilising our experience to provide consultation services in Eastern Europe and other regions, and by our implementing various cadastral management systems. It is strongly believed that a genuine improvement in the economies of these countries may be achieved over the coming five years, especially as the importance of a unified cadastral and land registry system is winning the attention of developed countries. The development of such is now attracting foreign aid via various international development agencies.

Adding Value
Since the Web is becoming more and more important, we are also seeking to promote the idea of Web services amongst institutions that harbour cadastral data, such as surveying and land registry authorities and offices. In this way, such authorities can easily sell data online to their partners, the thing that would most efficiently promote this sector, particularly in the developing countries. Finally, as we are currently becoming more and more concerned with our professional and value-added services, research and development becomes an integral part of our business. It has a yearly set budget and plan. Our success in research and development has enabled us to launch our own in-house developed products, such as Geo Web Tracker, Geo Call Centre, Street Routing Server, Arab IMS, Agriculture Geo Manager and Arab Nav., and there are many more applications to come.