Land is the major factor of production along with labor, entrepreneur, and capital. To use sustainably, land has to be administered and managed properly. To do so, the cadastral system plays a crucial role in the administration and management of land. Hence, the major objective of this research was to evaluate the institutional excellence of the urban cadastral system of Ethiopia. To achieve this objective, four specific objectives have been crafted and developed into four separate articles. Each article has its introduction, method, result and discussion, and conclusion and recommendation parts. Structurally, the dissertation is organized into six chapters; the first chapter comprehensively introduces the general concept of urban cadastral system, review of literature, the underlying gap and problem, theoretical underpinning, method, and the relationship among the articles. Next to the introduction, the next four chapters are covered by the four articles. The final chapter, i.e. chapter six, provides the general conclusion aimed at summarizing the major issues raised and covered in all articles. The first article deals with the development of an evaluation framework for the urban cadastral system policy of Ethiopia. This framework comprehensively proposed the basis for evaluating urban cadastral system policies that refer to. The framework used and synthesized many other standard frameworks. They are EFQM, Cadastre 2014, Land Governance Assessment Framework (LGAF), Evaluation of Land Administration Systems, Systematic Evaluation of Land Administration Systems, The Cadastral Template 2.0, and the 2030 Agenda for SDGs. The framework provides indicators of an ideal urban cadastral system. These indicators (including their good Practices) can be used for the systematic evaluation of the cadastral system. Aspects related to legal, institutional, economic, social, political, environmental, technical, and public private partnerships are combined as a consideration in this framework. The second article deals with the performance evaluation of land services in urban areas (Addis Ababa, Ethiopia). The evaluation is based on the European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM) excellence model. The indicators used as a reference for evaluation are nine criteria in the EFQM model. The nine variables are served as independent variables while organizational excellence is the dependent variable. The evaluation method is carried out through collecting data from focus group discussions, interviews, and questionnaires. Based on this, the overall performance of the urban cadastral institution is 62.3%, with major problems identified in the strategic plan, supply of resources, leadership skill, and the processes bureaucracy. In this regard, the exploration is new in that there is no investigation led in the study area utilizing the EFQM framework.