The World Bank financed a project to develop the human resources of the State Agency for Registration of Rights to Real Estate (Gosregister) in order to evaluate the work of the latter based on the study of feedback from stakeholders. The task of the consultants was to build the initial capacity of Gosregister monitoring specialists, with their subsequent training in practice within the framework of field work with research. A team of domestic experts implemented the project and conducted observations in registration offices, semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions. The capacity building work consisted of two formal workshops for monitoring and fieldworkers to identify stakeholder assessments of Gosregister's performance, led by trainers over a month.
As a result of this work, a set of research tools, handouts and a fieldwork manual were compiled, and the professional capabilities of 11 performance monitoring specialists were significantly expanded. Given the capacity thus enhanced, it is also recommended that the terms of reference for the aforementioned monitoring officers be expanded from the current practice of collecting quantitative indicators of results to better evaluations and the use of the data they provide in determining the overall policies and procedures of Gosregister.
The main component of the monitoring was research. After holding meetings with representatives of the parties concerned in the Project, four target groups were identified: ordinary clients (those who used registration services in 2006), non-clients (those who did not intersect with Gosregister on issues not related to system registration ), professional organizations that regularly work with Gosregister (including real estate agencies, notary offices and local governments), and Gosregister employees.
The study was conducted over two weeks in May-June 2007. It covered the most active 43 out of 50 local registration offices. For the purposes of the study, a sample was compiled with the following structure:
- 549 were clients (50% of the sample);
- 198 (18%) were not clients;
- 135 (12%) were representatives of various professional organizations providing services related to the activities of Gosregister;
- 223 were employees of Gosregister (20%).
Overall score
The quality of Gosregister's services is usually assessed as average, but its overall role is quite high. In addition, the general public generally understands and recognizes Gosregister's mission to stimulate the development of real estate markets. The public generally recognizes the importance of registration and the need to comply with laws, process real estate transactions, obtain loans or defend one's rights. However, Gosregister offers a large number of services that are generally unknown to the general public. It is necessary to ensure that such services are more readily available for review. The state and the media can play a large and important role in this.
According to the respondents, Gosregister should consider introducing and monitoring compliance with mandatory quality standards such as space heating, print sizes for information stands, and organizing other services in the vicinity of LROs in order to improve their overall positive image.
In most cases, payment for registration services is considered acceptable and affordable, however, almost 25% of respondents consider the amount of payment for services provided to be unreasonably high.
In the opinion of many respondents, competence and ethics in general are extremely important factors in the quality of services in general. Although the quality of the work of the registration officers is considered to be average, the respondents made recommendations for improving it, including training and increasing the accountability of employees. Moreover, Gosregister employees, through negligence, make small mistakes, such as misspelling names, addresses, complaints, etc. This clearly demonstrates the need for further training and increased accountability, rather than addressing the problem of staff incompetence. However, the majority of respondents consider the work of the employees of registration offices to be professional and are satisfied with the services they provide.
Gosregister employees, as well as clients, complain that the problems they face in the registration process are related to the lack of awareness of organizations providing related registration services - this is especially true of local registration offices. About 18% of all mistakes that clients had to face, and 24% of mistakes made by organizations, were made due to problems with local authorities, not