1.11 REGIA layer for civil and fire safety

FIGURE 1.11

REGIA layer for civil and fire safety

Source: Sabaliauskas 2013. Used with permission; further permission required for reuse. Note: REGIA = Regional Geoinformational Environment Service.

Registers, which manages the national land register, among other things. All Lithuanian municipalities and a wide range of customers are now using the REGIA system (Sabaliauskas 2013), which is built on digitized GIS maps (by cities and regions) and includes multiple functional layers (figure 1.10). Each functional layer is managed by a dedicated service administrator (for example, a municipality or a road department of a municipality) which has rights to create or upload their own databases, store and manage information documents, and decide if information is for internal use only or is also accessible to the public.

The REGIA functionality serves, among others, as an AM system for specific users, but functionalities include much broader urban management fields such as planning, licensing, or property taxation. Government entities are the primary users of REGIA, most of which have administrator rights, while private businesses and citizens have read-only access to selected functions and information.

Figure 1.11 presents REGIA’s functionality of a civil and fire safety department, with an interactive map that shows each important facility, access roads, warning systems, and so forth, and the public and private properties in a specific zone. Users can click on an icon of a specific safety unit and see the detailed underlying information to gain critical knowledge quickly in an emergency, such as water intakes, road access, and contours and floor maps of buildings.

Asset management methods and processes

There are two basic well-distinguished methods or approaches to address and manage assets: portfolio asset management and technical asset management. Portfolio asset management approaches assets as part of a large portfolio without considering their specific material forms. From this perspective assets are assumed to be transferable. Portfolio asset management supports changing or mixing assets over time to maximize the key strategic objectives of a county, such as to improve wealth or services.

Portfolio management, the dominant approach in strategic AM, refers to making decisions about investment mix and policies, matching investments to objectives, allocating assets to institutions, and balancing risk against performance at the highest overall county strategic level: for example, when a high-level committee discusses specific technical options for a major infrastructure investment. Portfolio management requires choices between debt and equity, domestic and international debts, growth, safety, financial or fixed assets, and many other trade-offs to maximize revenues or services with acceptable risk. Accounting AM also largely approaches assets in portfolio methods focused on the universal financial forms and value of assets while disregarding the material forms for accounting purposes. This is the way to account and manage all kinds of assets in a universal portfolio in the central asset register, and in balance sheets.

Bear in mind that technical AM supported with analytic asset registers and logbooks is the opposite of portfolio management, since it approaches, manages, registers, and keeps recording each asset with its material form, along with detailed technical and financial specificities. Life-cycle AM is the highest standard form of technical AM. Municipalities in the developing world often perform various parts and functions of technical AM when operating, repairing, refurbishing, or modifying specific service or infrastructure assets, but often without consistently utilizing life-cycle AM functions and strategic AM.

Asset hierarchy The county assets appear either in a formal or a hidden structure of asset hierarchy that reflects the AM framework, the material form, and the technical specificities of assets. Modern ICT systems are naturally organized in a logical, technical, and governance hierarchy of assets and offer modules to manage specific assets (for example, tools for fleet management, road management, or building management).

Figure 1.12 illustrates asset hierarchy for managing fixed assets in NCC. SGAM, accounting AM, and a central asset register would be focused on the highest level (level 1) of asset hierarchy in portfolio modality. Level 1 includes the financial and current assets but also liabilities attached to the fixed assets. In short, the level 1 asset hierarchy is the domain for strategic and accounting AM. Level 2 is the domain of technical AM and LCAM and maintains the technical asset registers (called a departmental inventory register or DIR in NCC). However, the service units and departments also should play a substantial role in strategic AM by initiating and drafting proposals for strategic-level asset decisions based on their intimate knowledge of their mandated services and respective assets and liabilities and by managing assets in Level 2. The Level 2 and lower levels of asset hierarchy are subjects of the technical or service-level AM and in good systems using life-cycle AM for all and each substantial fixed asset.

Asset registers also have a practical and logical hierarchy with specific functions on each level. Figure 1.13 depicts the main functions and logical hierarchy of various asset registers. The general or main asset register has multiple functions, including accounting all assets, maintaining historic procurement values, recording repair and maintenance costs, and supporting SGAM decisions on portfolio modality. The accounting AM register also serves the balance sheet with book values, depreciation, and corresponding costs and liabilities in accrual accounting or it supplements cash-accounting with separate financial ledgers, as mandated in Kenya (PFM Act 2012).