What is the National Address Gazetteer

The National Address Gazetteer will be a new source of gazetteer data that will be created by the Local Government Group and Ordnance Survey, who have formed a joint venture called GeoPlace for the ongoing maintenance of a single definitive national address and street database.

It will take form through the blending of three existing datasets – local government’s address and street gazetteers: the NLPG (National Land and Property Gazetteer) and the NSG (National Street Gazetteer), along with Ordnance Survey’s OS MasterMap® Address Layer 2.

Through the creation of the National Address Gazetteer neither the public nor private sector will have to choose between competing addressing products and in many instances it will significantly reduce licensing costs to those organisations who currently have to license more than one.

The National Address Gazetteer will be made available to the public sector under the PSMA (Public Sector Mapping Agreement), which will include signatories of both the MSA (Mapping Services Agreement) and the PGA (Pan-Government Agreement).

Within the private sector, once contracts are finalised, businesses both large and small will be able to licence the National Address Gazetteer for their own internal and external use.

What this means is that for the first time, all public and private sector bodies will be referencing the same data, and through this reducing errors and duplications, saving time and money, and ultimately producing a better service for the taxpayer and/or consumer.

Questions and Answers about the National Address Gazetteer

A full list of Q & As about the National Address Gazetteer are available on the Intelligent Addressing Website though for those currently involved in the NLPG, these are the two most important points:

Q. Will the products created from the national address gazetteer database replace the NLPG and the NSG?

A. In time the dataset names will disappear, but the NLPG and the NSG data forms a core component of the national address gazetteer database and therefore, current users will be able to continue to access data compatible with that of today.

Any new product will be compatible with the current gazetteers and BS7666.

Q. I work for a local authority that produces a LLPG for our area. Will I need to start again and produce a new gazetteer?

A. No. Current processes and working practices for exchange of data between local authorities and the addressing hub will continue. All local authority custodians have been sent a briefing paper outlining the details.

Aligned Assets and the National Address Gazetteer

Aligned Assets are a market leader in the supply of address management solutions to both the public and private sector. Their solutions are designed so they will allow organisations to make full use of the National Address Gazetteer

How can you best make use of the National Address Gazetteer?

Managing the National Address Gazetteer

Gazetteer specialists Aligned Assets provide industry leading gazetteer management systems for use both by local authorities in the creation of gazetteer data and for organisations who will wish to make use of the National Address Gazetteer.

The Symphony Suite is a complete range of gazetteer management solutions that enable the creation, validation, maintenence and sharing of all local authority land, property and street data. At its core is iManage NLPG and iManage NSG, both of which will be converted for use with the National Address Gazetteer when the time arises.

For the emergency services, Aligned Assets have created Symphony Bluelight, which has been devised specifically for their use. It will allow for the National Address Gazetteer to be held centrally and disseminated into all front-line and back office systems. Additionally it will allow for each record in the National Address Gazetteer to be extended with additional information, local records to be created and contains full candidate record processing.

Automated Updates

One of the key strengths of the NLPG, which will be continued with the National Address Gazetteer, is the ability for it to be regularly updated. Updates can be received on a monthly, weekly or even daily basis, and Aligned Assets provide software to ensure that these updates, once received, are automatically exported into all other systems.

For local authorities it is also important that other departments receive changes to their gazetteer, which is achieved through Symphony iExchange. Each recipient of your gazetteer data can be individually configured, allowing you to choose frequency you send it e.g. daily, weekly, monthly, the format you wish to send it e.g. DTF, XML, CSV and type of data sent e.g. only approved LPIs, only those with NDR cross references.

Web Services

The web services available through the Aligned Asset software will allow for the National Address Gazetteer to be held centrally, which can then be accessed by all departments via intranet or even by the public via internet connections (dependent on licensing).

Systems throughout an organisation will be able to use the web services to ensure that accurate addressing is no longer an issue. An additional advantage is that updates to National Address Gazetteer data, will be instantly accessible to all.

For the emergency services, National Address Gazetteer web services will be available through Symphony Bluelight Search, whilst for local government and the private sector it will be available through SinglePoint.

Data Matching and Geocoding

The National Address Gazetteer once created will be the most accurate and definitive source of address data ever created. With Aligned Assets software, you will be able to match your legacy data against the National Address Gazetteer to ensure that it is all up to date and accurate.

For the emergency services, data matching is a key component in Symphony Bluelight Enterprise and Symphony Bluelight Professional, and for local government it is available through the use of iMatch.

You will also be able to tag your legacy data with geographical copordinates through the process of geocoding against the National Address Gazetteer, which will enable you to make better use of your data via geographical information systems (GIS).

Click here for more information on the benefits of geocoding in the emergency services

Click here for more information on the benefits of geocoding in local government

Click here for more information on the benefits of geocoding in business