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| September 2006 Edition |

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General:

1. Arrangements Post 1st October 2006

2. AGI Conference and Exhibition
3. Guidelines for BS 7666:2006
4. DNA-S interoperable with NLPG
5. NLPG and NSG Exemplar Awards 2006 and Best Practice Workshop
6. DCLG Update
7. Job Vacancy at High Peak Borough Council, Derbyshire

NLPG:

1. NLPG Technical Working Party

2. NLPG Guidance/Conventions Document - objectives and
timescales
3. Council Tax Matching Exercise
4. Regional Custodian Group Meetings
5. Status 3s, 4s and 5s

NSG:

1. Up and Coming Work

2. September Publication of the NSG
3. Forthcoming Events
4. Previous Events

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[General]
**1. Arrangements Post 1st October 2006**
IDeA and IA staff are in contact with authorities about their
progress with various
aspects of their LLPG and LSG

obligations under the MSA. A letter is being sent to the small

number of authorities
that we understand won’t currently

meet the deadline of having a linked LLPG. The number is

currently 8 but this could
reduce due to the activities

currently in hand to meet the target. The letter offers help

and explains the arrangements
that need to be agreed for
 the maintenance of the LLPG for the relevant areas until the
authority is able to
take over the task.

A second letter has been drafted to be sent offering help to

authorities that haven’t
met the criteria they signed up to

in their Improvement Schedules. This letter concerns the

frequency of updates and
the prospect that a number of

authorities may not meet the frequency they committed to

(monthly, two weekly, weekly,
daily). This letter will be sent

in October when the statistics are available for the actual

submissions during September.
Again IDeA and IA staff are

available to discuss these or any related issues that

Authorities have.

**2. AGI Conference and Exhibition**

The NLPG NSG stand at the AGI conference and exhibition, which
took place last week
at the Business Design Centre in

London, was a central point of information for local authorities

attending the event.
With both Simon Barlow, the NLPG

Custodian and Nick Turner, the NSG Custodian present, as well as

other team members
from IA and IDeA, local authority

visitors were able to talk in detail about any issues, problems

or queries that
they had with their LLPG or LSG, get an

up-to-date report of their authorities LLPG match against

Council Tax data and pick
up copies of the NLPG

Handbook.

In their exhibition bags, all visitors to the event were also

given a copy of a
flyer outlining latest news from IA,

highlighting successes with NLPG and NSG as well as other news

items reported in
this and previous e-Zines.

As well as having a presence on the exhibition floor, IA were

well represented in
the conference, with Tony Black

chairing a session and Michael Nicholson speaking in the final

plenary session of
the conference on ‘PSI feast or

famine? – What the does the future offer?

The paper examined the growing debate, in the UK and elsewhere

in Europe, over the
accessibility of public sector

information. He examined the current models and how more open

availability would
maximize its benefit to both private

and public sectors

Michael’s presentation was nominated “Best Paper at the

conference� and in
making the award the judges said “The winning

paper at AGI2006 was an extremely well-written and well-

presented paper - a personal,
passionate and thought-provoking

presentation on a very topical subject area, drawing on direct

experience�.

The conference papers were marked against three criteria -

usefulness to readers
and delegates; how innovative they

were; quality of the written paper. Follow the link to view the
[1]paper and [2]presentation.

[1] http://www.nlpg.org.uk/documents/Sept06/AGI_paper.pdf
[2]
http://www.nlpg.org.uk/documents/Sept06/AGI2006_presentation.pdf

**3. Guidelines for BS 7666:2006**

Guidelines are being produced for the recently revised edition
of BS 7666:2006 Spatial
datasets for geographical

referencing. These guidelines are intended to make the Standard

more accessible
 and usable. In particular, they

will:

provide an introduction to all parts of the standard;

make the Standard more accessible and understandable by
interpretation of the requirement
clauses in the Standard;
provide general guidance in the implementation of the standard;
provide illustrations and examples.

In terms of scope, the Guidelines will cover:

the underlying concepts, the purpose of the Standard and the

applicability;
the approach to creating a gazetteer of any type of geographic
object in conformance
to the general model in Part

0;
the general approach to the creation of gazetteers of streets,
land and property
and delivery points;
quality assessment and reporting;
the creation of national gazetteers.

It is intended that the Guidelines should be for general use and

independent of
any particular application such as the

National Street Gazetteer or the National Land and Property

Gazetteer. Specifications
for these applications will be

developed by those bodies responsible for their implementation

but within, it is
hoped, the framework provided by the

Guidelines.

A Steering Group comprising representatives of the main

stakeholders has been convened
under the auspices of the AGI

Standards Committee. Initial sponsorship for the work has been

obtained from the
Department for Communities and Local

Government (DCLG) and Ordnance Survey. Additional sponsorship is

being sought from
other stakeholders including software
 suppliers. It is expected that the Guidelines will be published
early in 2007.

There will be compatibility between the Guidelines and the NLPG

Guidance/Conventions
document - see NLPG Section items 1

and 2

**4. DNA-S interoperable with NLPG**

IA are working closely with the Definitive National Address for
Scotland (DNA-S)
team to ensure that the vision of an integrated address
infrastructure for GB is
nearing realisation.

IA have developed and supplied the NLPG database schema to DNA-

Scotland to facilitate
the implementation of the DNA-Scotland Gazetteer (DNA-G). The
DNA-Scotland programme
is part of ‘Customer First’ a Scottish Executive sponsored
programme to deliver
more convenient and responsive public services. DNA-Scotland is
being developed
in partnership with the Scotland’s local authorities and
managed, with the support
of CoSLA (Convention of Scottish Local Authorities) and SOLACE
(Society of Local
Authority Chief Executives and Senior Managers), under the
direction of the Improvement
Service.

‘Customer First’ recognises the need for some common

national and local infrastructure
and, since most services are associated with a location, funding
has been put in
place to get the addressing component operating within each
authority to help them
develop their own CAGs (Corporate Address Gazetteers, equivalent
to LLPGs south
of the border). The CAGs will then be linked to a national
property based gazetteer
(DNA-G), which is BS 7666:2000 (parts 1&2) compliant.

The use of BS 7666 and the NLPG schema will enable public sector
property based
information exchange with public sector organisations across the
border in England
and Wales and vice versa.
 Further collaboration between IA and DNA-Scotland will see
common use of DNA-Scotland’s
web services, a robust technical architecture and XML schema,
which will facilitate
secure updating and online access of gazetteers, which will be
open to the public
sector.

Click [1]here to see the press release announcing the cross

border collaboration.

[1]
http://www.nlpg.org.uk/documents/Sept06/DNA_Scotland_Press_Release
.pdf

**5. NLPG and NSG Exemplar Awards 2006 and Best Practice
Workshop**
Arrangements are well underway for the NLPG and NSG Exemplar
Awards presentation
and Best Practice workshop which will take place on the morning
of Tuesday 10th
October 2006 – just before the opening of the SOLACE
Conference.

Designed to recognise excellence, the awards are a celebration

of success at the
highest level and an acknowledgment of pioneering work in the
creation, maintenance
and integration of Land and Property Gazetteers and Street
Gazetteers.

Preceding the awards presentation will be a workshop aimed at

sharing Best Practice
which will demonstrate how the NLPG and NSG are bringing real,
demonstrable benefits
to local and central government. A key part of the workshop
will include a presentation
of an Independent report from the Centre for Economics and
Business Research into
the value of the efficiency savings offered by LLPGs and how
they can help local
authorities meet public sector efficiency targets under the
Gershon Review as well
as their obligations under Transformational Government. This is
sure to be of value
to all local authorities that are seeking to underline the
business and customer
service benefits of a single point of reference LLPG.
 All local authority LLPG and NSG custodians are invited to
attend the workshop,
awards presentation and lunch. Simply email
[1]ggander@intelligent-addressing.co.uk
to confirm your attendance. Click [2]here for the schedule for
the event.

[1] mailto:ggander@intelligent-addressing.co.uk
[2] http://www.nlpg.org.uk/documents/Sept06/Exemplar.pdf

**6. DCLG Update**

DCLG issued [1]Press Releases about the current situation on

the procurement of the Pan Government Agreement 2 and the

National Interest Mapping
Services Agreement on 11th

September. There have been no developments on the National

Spatial Addressing Infrastructure
over the past few months.

[1] http://www.iggi.gov.uk/news.php

**7. Job Vacancy at High Peak Borough Council, Derbyshire**

[1]High Peak Borough Council are in the process of advertising

for a Corporate GIS Officer. Details can be found in the [2]

Jobs Section

from 25th September onwards.

[1] http://www.highpeak.gov.uk
[2] http://poweredby.jobsgopublic.com/highpeak/index.cfm?
fuseaction=Job.ListAll

[NLPG]
**1. NLPG Technical Working Party**
The techical working group has been actively discussing a new
set of data entry
conventions in light of the BS 7666 review. The content of the
documentation will
ensure a more consistent approach to data entry within LLPGs
both locally and nationally
and tighten up on identified areas within the previous
documentation where better
guidance was required.

Part of the project is also developing a standard set of street

naming and numbering
guidelines incorporated into the LLPG documentation to ensure
the whole process
 of address collation and data entry within local government is
interlinked with
the role of the gazetteer. The group is working towards
releasing the new documentation
in October 2006 together with an online resource for all
custodians to access the
information and FAQs. More information will be provided to each
of your regional
chairs at the end of the month.

**2. NLPG Guidance/Conventions Document - objectives and

timescales**
See Technical Working Party article (above).

**3. Council Tax Matching Exercise**

Many thanks to all the custodians who have already responded to
the council tax
matching exercise. Due to your efforts we have achieved an
extremely encouraging
start with, at the time of writing, 107 authorities sending
through changes and
confirmations.

At the start of the exercise we had a match rate of 93.53% and

this has risen to
95.44%. Now 79 authorities have match rates of better than 99%
and a total of 248
are better than 95%. We encourage those authorities that have
not yet responded
to contact us if they have any queries - if any of you have
cross-ref tables then
please forward these and we will rerun the exercise using these
tables.

There is, as yet, no date set for undertaking a similar exercise

with the non domestic
rates; when there is further news on this we will be in contact.

**4. Regional Custodian Group Meetings**

Planned LLPG meetings are arranged for the South East (October
20th in Crawley)
and the South West (October 16th in

Taunton). Please contact your regional chair for more

information.

**5. Status 3s, 4s and 5s**

For the benefit of authorities with Status 1 and Status 2 LLPGs
now developing county/regional
 initiatives, and for emergency service organisations needing to
use LLPGs we are
publishing the [1]list of authorities still in the early stages
of their LLPG creation.

[1] http://www.nlpg.org.uk/documents/Sept06/345_sept_06_ezine.pdf

[NSG]
**1. Up and Coming Work**
The deadline for Level 3 creation is now just around the corner.
Any authorities
who need any help or advice on the

creation of this data should contact the hub as soon as

possible.

A comparison between the streets and USRNs in the LSGs against

the streets in the
constituent LLPGs will be conducted by

the hub over the next few weeks. The aim to have consistency
between the NSG and
NLPG hubs. Results of the exercise will

be distributed in due course.

An analysis of the quality of coordinates will also be

undertaken by the hub in
the near future. Any LSGs containing

coordinates outside of the Local Highway Authority boundary will

be flagged as warnings.
These warnings should be

corrected with due haste.

**2. September Publication of the NSG**

The NSG Custodian would like to thank all LSG custodians for the
most successful
update (and publication) of the NSG

to date. All 172 Local Highway Authorities submitted data to the

hub during August,
with all submissions passing the

standard compliance tests.

The NSG was published 2 days ahead of schedule on the 12th

September and is currently
available for download from the
 website.

**3. Forthcoming Events**

A representative from Intelligent Addressing will be present at
the North West Regional
Local Street Gazetteer

Custodians Group to be held in St Helens on 11th October 2006.

An agenda for the
day is yet to be drawn and any topics

for discussion should be forwarded to the Regional or deputy

custodian forthwith.

The Local Street Gazetteer Regional Custodians group is due to

meet on 16th October
2006 in IDeAs offices in

Farringdon. Items for the agenda should be forwarded to your

Regional Chair as soon
as possible.

**4. Previous Events**

Nick Turner attended the SEHAUC Conference on 6th September 2006
at Sandown. The
day was a great success with an

impressive turnout of numbers. Nick would like to thank all

custodians and representatives
from other organisations

that attended his stand and listened to his talk.

On Monday September 11th 2006 Transport for London hosted an NSG

workshop at their
offices in Victoria. Seven South

London Boroughs attended and the day proved to a very productive

forum for debate
and education. Some of the topics

included level 3 creation, handling ASD and the intricacies of

locality addressing.

Further regional workshops are planned for the future starting

with North London,
any custodians wishing to host or be

part of a future workshop should contact the hub for further

details.