Land management is aimed at generating optimal social, economic and environmental benefits while promoting sustainable development principles. An essential element of this process is the knowledge of the geospatial situation to support public decision-making at different levels: local, regional, national and global. Hence, there is a need for rapid access to complete and updated information about the physical characteristics of a property, rights, restrictions, responsibilities and interrelations. This information is provided by land administration systems (LAS). LAS are built and maintained by governments. The core of LAS is a multi-purpose cadastral system integrated with other spatial information systems and public registers. In this paper, the authors present the functional architecture and the assumptions of land administration systems built in Poland and Germany. The analysis results show the specificity of the systems' design in relation to socio-economic conditions