The design of digital cadastral systems must take the organization and required distribution of information into account.

While new technologies allow data to be stored centrally, the cadastre and land registration functions might be implemented at local level with little cooperation between administrative areas within the same country. Or the land register might be maintained at central level, while cadastral offices maintain the graphic information locally.

Many countries have an incomplete coverage, i.e. only the most populated part of the country is registered while land in more remote areas is not registered at all. Some countries organize systematic registration with the objective to achieve complete coverage of cadastral registration. For other countries this is considered too expensive and land parcels might be included when ownership transfer takes place, or on demand through sporadic registration.

Whether the information is stored centrally or decentralized in lower administrative levels, the extent of cadastral coverage (or number of registered parcels), and the way in which cadastral information is accessed and updated, all these are considerations with a direct impact on the design of the cadastral system architecture and the choice of software. A digital cadastral system that is being built up from scratch in a small pilot region of a developing country will initially require simple tools and low-cost solutions that can be extended and upgraded later on.

Centralized cadastres with online information services covering large administrative areas need sophisticated, scalable systems. What all cadastre systems have in common is the need for a spatial data store to keep and maintain cadastral data, and graphical editing tools to create and update cadastral boundaries.