The National Land Service (NLS) has successfully completed its second co-operation project - "Exchange of Knowledge and Best Practices on Digital Archives and ICT Process Optimization between the National Land Service under the Ministry of Agriculture of the Republic of Lithuania and the relevant Icelandic and Danish authorities". This project was largely funded by the Nordic-Baltic Mobility Program for Public Administration 2019.

Within the framework of this project, representatives of the NLS paid working visits to the Kingdom of Denmark and the Republic of Iceland.

From 5 to 8 November, the representatives of the National Land Service (NLS) took part in the LANDNET International Conference "Territorial Development – Challenges and Opportunities", held in Spain, where representatives from 38 countries shared experiences and sought for the best ground management decisions. At the event of the city of Santiago de Compostela, NLS was represented by Algis Bagdonas, Deputy Director, Daiva Mikalauskiene, Director of Land Administration and Management Department and Odeta Jogmine, chief specialist of the Land Management Division.

On October 14 to 17, 2019, the representatives of the National Land Service (NLS) visited two Danish institutions under a project funded by the Nordic-Baltic Mobility and Networking Programme for Public Administration. The partners of the project "Exchange of knowledge and best practices on the optimization of digital archives and ICT processes between the National Land Service and the Ministry of Agriculture of the Republic of Lithuania and the respective Icelandic and Danish authorities" are the Danish Geodata Agency and the Danish Agency for Data Supply and Efficiency. In the institutions, the NLS representatives heard reports on the institutional activities, main areas and aspirations of the institutions, the digitalization situation in Denmark, historical maps and their storage, the implementation of data protection and the digitization of archives, registration of real estate, cadastral maps and registers and other relevant information.

Representatives of the National Land Service (NLS) participated in the 20th session of the Expert Group on Geographical Names of the Baltic Section of the United Nations (UN), held in Riga on 24 and 26 September 2019.

The session was attended by experts from Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Russia.

In the days of September 22-25, 2019 the representatives of the National Land Service  payed a work visit to two Icelandic institutions.  This year this was the first visit related to the project funded by the Nordic-Baltic Mobility and Networking Programme for Public Administration 2019.

The National Land Service (NLS) informs that, according to the data of April 1, 2019, the land, forest and water bodies held in rural areas were left to restore to 4.7 thousand citizens. 2 739 from the applicants cannot enforce the procedures for the restoration of the rights of ownership because of their own failure. Currently, the territorial divisions of the National Land Service are intensively searching for these passive applicants throughout Lithuania. In case those efforts failed, and the applicants do not appear, NLS intends to make decisions to restore ownership to land in cash in autumn.

On February 14, a contract for the purchase of services for the implementation of an anti-corruption management system at the National Land Service (NLS) was signed. NLS is the first state institution in Lithuania to implement anti-corruption management system developed in accordance with the best global anti-corruption practice, in compliance with the requirements of international ISO 37001: 2016 standard.

According to the data of January 1, 2019, ownership rights were restored to 45 772 citizens (passive applicants included), to 91.44 percent of the land registered in their applications. The area of land covered by the application to be retained for 6051 citizens is 3367 hectares of land.

One of the most important tasks of the National Land Service of the Republic of Lithuania defined in the program of the Government is to complete the restoration of property rights to land in rural and urban areas in 2019.

According to the data of January 1, the restoration of the ownership of the land, forest and water bodies in rural areas is essentially completed – the ownership rights were restored to 99.95 percent of citizens' requests (including passive applicants).

On December 19, 2018, the National Land Service under the Ministry of Agriculture organized a commemoration-conference "Century of Land Management in Lithuania".

At the conference, the speakers reviewed the development of land relations during the historical period of 100 years, carried out land management works, introduced the establishment and development of the real estate cadastre and register in Lithuania as well as the issues of training of land management specialists.