Following approval from the Office of Fair Trading (OFT), the legal process to form GeoPlace has now been finalised, and production of the ‘national address gazetteer database’ to provide one definitive source of accurate spatial address data for England and Wales is now on track for delivery in the Autumn 2011. GeoPlace is a public sector Limited Liability Partnership (LLP) jointly owned by the Local Government Group and Ordnance Survey. Products produced from the national address gazetteer database will be available to all customers through Ordnance Survey. The public sector, including local and central government, emergency services and health, will licence GeoPlace products through the Public Sector Mapping Agreement, which takes effect on 1 April.
Usage, in both the private and public sector, will provide efficiency gains, more accurate and improved delivery of services and enable greater partnership working with private and third sector delivery bodies. By synchronising data and processes nationally, significant cost savings will be achieved by eliminating the need for users to undertake data matching of different spatial address datasets.
The maintenance of the national address gazetteer database will build on the processes already put in place by 522 local authorities to provide up-to-date address and street information to a central hub operated by GeoPlace. Aligning processes will enable the linkage of this data to map data from Ordnance Survey.
Whilst product development is ongoing, there is an opportunity for interested users, including existing addressing customers and partners, to review the proposed specification and receive alpha sample data. The specification and sample data is available through Ordnance Survey’s OS Insight member’s programme, and already over 250 organisations have registered their interest. An illustrative view of the data can also be viewed on the Ordnance Survey website at: www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/
Sue Coleman from Ordnance Survey said: “Over the last seven years, OS Insight has become a valuable platform to support product development. By encouraging consultation from the earliest stages, we can go a long way in ensuring we develop the best products and solutions to meet our customers’ needs.”
Richard Mason, GeoPlace Managing Director, added: “This is a truly exciting opportunity. GeoPlace is bringing together spatial addressing information from products produced by Ordnance Survey and local government into one place. We want to ensure that the best bits from both products are maintained and that we ultimately deliver a superior quality spatial addressing product.”
Brendan Harris, Director of Knowledge and Innovation at the Local Government Group, said: “This database will provide a consistent ‘core reference dataset’ from the public sector, which can be used to underpin and transform services. The opportunity to build applications around this data will enable both the public and the private sector to provide innovative, cost effective solutions for their customers.”
For more information on GeoPlace visit www.geoplace.co.uk
To gain access to OS Insight visit www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/
