Over the last couple of years, Bolton Council has invested considerable effort in improving the quality of its Local Land and Property Gazetteer (LLPG) so that it is fit for its role at the heart of the Council’s interactions with its customers and in helping the Council to work more effectively.

Bolton’s Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system is the hub of the enterprise to provide better services to its citizens so it is vital that this system is built upon accurate and reliable information. The LLPG is the key source of property information for the CRM system and any inaccuracies in it have consequences for the speed, quality and cost of the service Bolton provides to its customers. When the Oracle CRM system was introduced three years ago using an early cut of the LLPG, there were significant problems arising from missing addresses, addresses in the wrong place, addresses with incorrect postcodes and duplicates. Most of these problems have now been resolved after a major data cleaning exercise and the Oracle CRM system is now supplied with regular updates from the LLPG via the Oracle e-Business Suite. The number of service requests resulting in an ‘address not found’ has now reduced to virtually none from a level of about 100 a week two years ago.

Growing confidence in the quality of the LLPG means that the time is now right to provide links between the LLPG and other major Council systems.  How Bolton achieves this will differ between systems. In some cases the systems include a BS7666 gazetteer which will be populated and updated directly from the LLPG. In other cases addresses will be matched with the LLPG and an additional LLPG_UPRN field added to records – these systems will then receive updates from the LLPG via the Oracle e-business suite. 

The benefits of linkages will include:

• Making it easier to provide a seamless service to our customers by bringing together information about a property from a variety of different systems through the common use of the LLPG Unique Property Reference Number (UPRN)

• Consistency of address information between systems

• Reducing or eliminating the need for manual entry of addresses into systems once they take updates from the master holding – the LLPG

• Providing the ability to map and spatially analyse the contents of systems that were previously textual rather than spatial – the UPRN allows records to be linked with the point or polygon spatial data held in the LLPG.

The improvements in the quality of Bolton’s LLPG has given them the confidence to expose it to the public through their web mapping project which was implemented in response to ODPM Priority Outcome G5. Bolton uses Astun Technology’s iShareMaps combined with Aligned Assets’ iSearchWeb for this. Since March 2006, the Council’s customers can now find the location of some key services on an interactive map by following the Online Maps link on the Access Bolton web site. Bolton’s master LLPG is the gazetteer used to power the Find an Address function of Online Maps which then allows customers to Find My Closest services. The aim is to make it easier for customers to find information about their nearest services, their area or their property on a self-service basis in the comfort of their own homes. A quality gazetteer is a key element in making this work.

Quality Gazetteer Management System

As the LLPG is being used to assist Bolton in an operational capacity it is essential that Bolton can maintain it with ease and ensure that all linked systems can access the changes that are made to the master LLPG. Their original software for maintaining the LLPG was unable to produce adequate change only updates and didn’t have enough validation checking included within it so Bolton struggled to pass the NLPG hub validation tests. 

The new corporate gazetteer management solution was implemented in February 2006 and uses the Aligned Assets’ Symphony Suite product with an Oracle database. The software is reliable, scaleable and has many advantages over the old software:

• The export function is reliable and has been accepted by the NLPG as complying with the validation rules for both full export and change only.

• It includes many more data validation checks

• It allows certain productivity improvements particularly when entering large numbers of new properties

• It includes better mechanisms for supplying other systems with updates in a variety of formats. This will include transactional updates to the Oracle e-business suite (to be implemented later this year).

To summarise

After the efforts of the last couple of years Bolton now has an LLPG of a much higher quality, which is maintained in a sustainable environment and fit for its role as a key tool in joining up services and improving the service to the customer.

More information regarding the Symphony Suite (including iSearchWeb) may be found in our Products section.

More information regarding iShareMaps Location Server may be found in our Products section.