Whilst Geographic Information Systems (GIS) provide public organisations with opportunities to automate and streamline administrative practices, their introduction into land agencies in the developing world will require the capacity to manage change and, most particularly, to sustain this process over a considerable period of time. The Lands Commission Secretariat (LCS) is the agency primarily responsible for managing public lands in Ghana.

The LCS is on the threshold of adopting ‘geotechnology’ and is considering different organisational models for GIS implementation. It is important to establish the GIS model most appropriate for adoption by this agency and that might be replicated in other land agencies under the Ministry of Lands and Forestry in Ghana.

In this paper, we consider which model might be appropriate for the Accra LCS and examine those factors that would facilitate or inhibit the success of GIS implementation under the adopted model environment. The paper argues that the widely used ‘enterprise model’ for GIS may not be appropriate following an empirical study conducted during the summer of 2001, and recommends a synthesis of ideas from various approaches. It suggests that the success of this approach will depend on how effective the LCS will be in its quest for autonomy and on how amenable certain practices within the culture of the LCS are to change.