Councils boost address data accuracy

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Three local authorities are taking on new address verification software to integrate with a key UK address database and better manage the citizen address data held on their systems.

The London Borough of Brent, Surrey County Council and Manchester City Council announced today they will use QAS Gateway, Experian QAS address verification software, to integrate with the National Land and Property Gazetteer (NLPG).

The NLPG contains over 30 million residential, business and non-mailing addresses and is used extensively by local authorities in England and Wales.

The authorities are looking to reduce the costs associated with managing inaccurate and incorrectly formatted address data across multiple departments.

A 2006 report by the Centre for Economics and Business Research estimated local government could tap efficiency gains of £54.4 million a year by using NLPG data.

By integrating the NLPG with verification software, the authorities will be able to ensure the accuracy of address data entering and already in their systems to prevent duplicate citizen records. And they will be able link addresses/citizens across departments using a unique property reference number (UPRN).

The software also offers Brent, Surrey and Manchester the opportunity to support data sharing and migration projects, as well as to append additional datasets to gain insight into the profiles of the types of people accessing public services.

Chris Waterman, client index project manager at London Borough of Brent, said: “We were keen to use QAS Gateway across Brent council to improve the quality of the address information we hold.”

He said improving address quality is an important part of the council’s ongoing Client Index project, which is building a single citizen view of those living and working in the borough.

“Introducing QAS software will enable us to exploit the Local Land and Property Gazetteer (a local version of the NLPG) and ensure we capture better quality data, first time,” he added.

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