Centralized housing information system launched
The Ministry of Urban and Rural Development, together with the Namibia Statistics Agency, recently launched the Namibia housing information system.
The purpose of the Namibia housing information system is to centralize housing and land statistics in the country. The objective is to ensure that all land and housing statistics are entered into a centralized database to have such statistics coordinated and available instantly.
The genesis of this innovation comes from the 5th National Development Plan launched in 2017 as well as the 1st Harambee Prosperity Plan. The Harambee Goal and outcome aimed to ensure that enough new houses are constructed and that an increased number of erven is serviced.
According to a joint statement, the Namibia housing information system is developed in-house and the indicator framework is informed by NDP 5, Resolutions of the previous national land conference, as well as development plans inclusive of the 2nd Harambee Prosperity Plan.
The team behind these consists of staff from both the Ministry of Urban and Regional Development as well as the Namibia Statistics Agency.
Meanwhile at the core of the system is a centralized national housing database, with a decentralized data entry allowing for flexibility, providing potential self-regulation, and a portal for public information and documents to be submitted online.
“This allows for tracking of applications and monitoring the speed of implementation of housing
and land needs. Applicants are notified via email and email on the progress of their application,” the statement added.
According to the statement, the modules of the system are classified into 4 areas, namely housing stock, land use stock, housing needs, and informal settlements.
The housing stock is interested in identifying dwelling units that are occupied or available for occupation by households and include improvised structures (shacks), flats, apartments, and backyard structures, just to mention a few. The land stock use represents the economic and cultural activities such as agricultural, residential, industrial, recreational, mining and quarrying, amongst others. The housing needs module is significant as it will provide statistics on the housing units required.
The informal settlement module captures those areas where groups of housing units have been constructed on land that has no water, sanitation, or electricity services and the occupants have no legal claim to occupy the land.
“This Namibia housing information system will be rolled out to all regional and local authorities,
as well as the NHE, Schack dwellers federations, banks and other organizations dealing with land and housing statistics,” the statement added.
“There shall be a one-year pilot phase where the staff of various institutions is trained on how to use to the system to transfer old data about housing and land applications onto the system, and ensuring that all new applications will be recorded through the housing information system.
During this one-year pilot phase, there will be seminars to finalize and validation of concepts and definitions, training of trainers as well as training of local and regional authority staff, as well as interested parties. The process has been started and by next year around this time the system should be fully ready and available to the public,” the statement concluded.
