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| December 2009 Edition |

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General:

1. A Significant Year of Success for the NLPG & NSG

2. IA Ends Year Another Year of Achievements
3. INSPIRE Regulations 2009
4. Listen to and Download Presentations from the UTG Conference
5. ISO9001 Review
6. State of the NLPG and NSG
7. VOA Matching
8. Andy Lawes Memorial Fund - Update
9. Got your Calendar yet?
10. Intelligent Addressing Christmas Break

1. The NLPG - From Stone Bridge to Multiple Highway

1. NSG Goes from Strength to Strength

-----[articles]-----

[General]
**1. A Significant Year of Success for the NLPG & NSG**
This has been both a challenging and a rewarding year. We recently celebrated
the
NLPG's 10th anniversary at our Underpinning Transformational Government
conference.
Seeing so many of you rewarded for your hard work through the Exemplar Awards
created
an event we think was our best yet. LGIH enjoyed seeing many of you at the
conference
jointly organised with IA. We hope you found it a valuable and rewarding day.

As many of you know, the very next day we received an award, on behalf of
everyone
involved in the initiative, from Europe which acknowledged the NLPG and NSG as
best
practice examples of a spatial data infrastructure. Gaining this recognition
from
well respected experts in Europe goes to demonstrate this ten year long
programme
is going from strength to strength.

We do have many challenges ahead going into 2010. We all face tighter budgets;
there
is a continued need to deliver high quality services coupled with an even
greater
focus on public sector information through drivers such as Inspire, freeing up
data
and the Linked data project. These are all likely to bring about some
significant
changes in the public sector. There is a real opportunity through these
drivers
for all of us to highlight the importance of the day to day work you do at the
highest
levels within your organisation.

We wish you a very happy and peaceful Christmas and New Year
 Steve Brandwood, Programme Manager, Geographic Information, Local Government
Information
House

**2. IA Ends Year Another Year of Achievements**

Intelligent Addressing has had a busy year. We received ISO9001
accreditation,
became an Oracle partner, developed new download formats for the NLPG (XML 7.4
and
INSPIRE AD v3 compliant), created a prototype for the dissemination of address
candidate
records, rewrote all the NSG health checks, and initiated a service to supply
user-defined
polygons of data. From this month we shall be offering an FTP service over a
more
secure SSL link.

At a time of increasing austerity I am delighted to report that all this has

been
achieved at no additional cost to MSA signatories. Our new Web Service may
well
also offer significant savings to local government users.

In addition, we have helped local authorities match their Registers of

Electors
(CORE) to their LLPGs, providing support to the ONS in order to minimise the
amount
of work required by local authorities investigating anomaly records from PAF,
and
supported hundreds of local authorities in aligning their Council Tax and NNDR
data
to the NLPG (over 99% of Council Tax now matches across England & Wales).

The Prime Minister and Chancellor's austerity messages for all of government
focus
on greater economy, more efficient working between back and front office and
shared
services. The NLPG and NSG can offer all these things and, at a time when
the
effective use and maintenance of information infrastructure may become ever-
more
vital, it was very gratifying to learn that the efforts of the whole of the
NLPG
and NSG communities had been recognised by the recent winning of an EU-
sponsored
award seeking Best Practice Spatial Data Infrastructures (selected out of 135
entries
from across Europe).

The NLPG and NSG has faced and overcome many obstacles over the past ten years
and,
although there will be more in the years to come, we are confident that the
challenges
will be met successfully.

With best wishes for Christmas and the New Year from all of us at Intelligent
Addressing
…

Michael Nicholson, Managing Director, Intelligent Addressing Ltd

**3. INSPIRE Regulations 2009**
The draft INSPIRE Regulations [SI 2009 No 3157] have been laid in the Houses
of
Parliament at Westminster. They are subject to parliamentary scrutiny but will
come
into effect on 31 December 2009. These regulations cover England, Northern
Ireland
and Wales. Scotland is making its own regulations to come into effect at the
same
time.

Background information, including a guide to the regulations for England,

Wales
and Northern Ireland will be published on the Location Programme [1]website
when
these regulations come into effect.

[1] http://www.defra.gov.uk/location/inspire/

**4. Listen to and Download Presentations from the UTG Conference**

If you couldn't attend this year's conference, or you were in a parallel
session,
you can now download the speakers' presentations and listen to the speakers by
downloading
each session's audio file from the room links within the conference programme
on
the NLPG and NSG websites.

The press release announcing NLPG NSG Exemplar Awards winners can be seen at
[1]www.nlpg.org.uk.

A write up of the Award winner, runners-up, and those awarded a highly

commended
and best practice certificate is now available at [2]NLPG .

[1] http://www.nlpg.org.uk/nlpg/link.htm?nwid=141
[2] http://www.iahub.net/docs/1260546494984.pdf

**5. ISO9001 Review**

As part of continued commitment to quality across the company, IA have
recently
successfully passed their first ISO9001:2000 Review Visit with flying colours,
following
our certification last year. We shall be moving to the updated 2008 version of
the
standard in June 2010. In addition we are putting in place a number of new
tools
and systems to maintain our high standard of service.

**6. State of the NLPG and NSG**

During the conference, Andrew Young, Chair of the NLPG Regional Chairs Group
and
Glenn Dobson, Chair of the NSG Regional Chairs Group each gave a presentation
outlining
their views on their respective gazetteers and what had been achieved during
2009.

Both presentations are available on the [1]NLPG and [2]NSG websites.

[1] http://www.nlpg.org.uk
[2] http://www.thensg.org.uk
**7. VOA Matching**
We are coming to the end of 2009 and the end of a successful and productive
year
for the VOA project. Since July the VOA have been providing monthly updates
which
included inserts, changes and deletes. We have received 702,903 update records
in
all, with 131,450 new live CTAX, 85,548 new live NDR, deleted 24,943 records
and
made changes to 302,252 records.

Despite the increase of over 123,000 CTAX records, IA, working in conjunction
with
Local Authorities, has brought the unmatched figure for CTAX to beneath
192,000
records resulting in an all time high National average of 99.21%(end of year
'08
match rate was 98.34%). 8 of the 10 Regions have averages over 99% and almost
four
fifths of the country now has match rates over 99%. There are only 6
authorities
under 95% (only 1.7% of the country).

NDR has continued to improve and despite almost 80,000 new records having been
added
since July the unmatched total has remained firmly under 500,000 with a match
rate
of 74.01% (end of year '08 match rate was 68%). With a new supply of VOA data
due
at the start of 2010 we expect this match rate to improve further.

**8. Andy Lawes Memorial Fund - Update**

Following the tragic death of Custodian Andy Lawes, colleagues are raising
funding
to have a memorial bench erected in his memory at the National Rail Museum at
York.
Andy was not only passionate about all things related to addressing, but also
about
(steam) railways and the countryside of Scotland. The cost of the bench will
be
£1000, and Marilyn George at East Riding would like to acknowledge generous
donations
to the fund from friends and Neighbours, Work Colleagues, plus many generous
donations
from Authorities near and far, all with a few words of comfort for the family.

When the bench is erected, there is an understanding that the bench will have
its
own UPRN, which will be engraved onto the inscription plate attached to the
bench,
and of course, submitted to the NLPG. There has also been a donation of a
smokebox
numberplate from a retired steam engine, which will be affixed to the bench.
The
numberplate is from an engine at 64A, which as all steam buffs know is St
Magarets
shed in Edinburgh, hopefully appropriate for a reminder of Andy's interest in
both
steam and Scotland. The fund currently stands at £760, some £240 short of the
full
amount for the bench. If anyone would like to make a donation to plug this
gap,
please send a cheque to Marilyn George, made out to 'Andrew Lawes Memorial
Fund'
c/o Marilyn George 42 Helmsley Grove, Hull HU5 5el

**9. Got your Calendar yet?**

With season's greetings from IA! Every Custodian and ALO should have received
a
2010 calendar featuring interesting and unusual photos taken by IA staff
members.
If you haven't received yours yet, please email Laura at
[1]lbrown@intelligent-addressing.co.uk.

[1] mailto:lbrown@intelligent-addressing.co.uk

**10. Intelligent Addressing Christmas Break**

Intelligent Addressing will be closed on the 25th and 28th December 2009, and
1st
January 2010. For the remainder of the time there will be staff available to
answer
queries on the Help Desk, process your update files and maintain the websites.

[NLPG]
**1. The NLPG - From Stone Bridge to Multiple Highway**
We've come a long way in the last 10 years since the NLPG was instigated. From
the
Information Age Concordat in 1999, through Implementing Electronic Government
to
Transformational Government, the NLPG has developed into an essential
component
at the heart of service delivery.

At the NLPG awards this year, I told how I'd once compared the NLPG with
painting
the Forth Road Bridge since neither job will ever be completely finished. This
analogy
isn't really valid however, since after all of the painting, the Forth Road
Bridge
essentially stays the same, yet the NLPG has changed dramatically since 1999.

Now that we've built our bridge, we need to continue to improve it and ensure
that
it can always support the expected traffic flow across it. Whilst we as Chairs
also
need to make sure that we don't let too much traffic across until the bridge
can
support it.

We've seen this happening in practise, this year in particular. Through the
hard
work of Gazetteer custodians integrating Valuation Office, Electoral Register,
Fire
Service and ONS data, both gazetteer quality and service delivery has improved
greatly.

Looking back at the bridge analogy then, the Gazetteer bridge is much bigger
than
it was; it has a lot more traffic; and it supports a local and national
infrastructure.
It has been developed to not only meet but exceed the current needs of its
users
but also to encourage the development of innovative, efficient and joined up
service
delivery; and it is all thanks to the dedication and hard work of gazetteer
custodians,
street naming and numbering officers and other gazetteer staff. A better
analogy
then is that the NLPG has developed from a small stone bridge to a huge new
multiple
carriageway bridge such as the Millau Bridge in France (It's worth googleing!)

I hope you all have a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year and we'll see
about
building an even bigger and better bridge in 2010.

Andrew Young - Chairman of the Regional LLPG Chairs

[NSG]
**1. NSG Goes from Strength to Strength**
The NSG has continued to go from strength to strength over the past year.
There
are numerous achievements including:

Introducing the Data Entry Conventions - DEC-NSG

This was also accepted in EToN Technical Specification for the first time
There has also been a huge amount of work migrating to the new Data transfer
format
7.1
The new unitary authorities have worked hard and now all authorities are at
Level
3.

The hub has also seen some changes. Simon Bailey is the new NSG custodian.
The
team at the hub have overall seen a real improvement in proactive engagement
with
the hub over the last year, both from creating authorities and from users of
the
NSG. Further technical hub developments include improved validation processes
to
help enhance the data quality held centrally, while also running a dual hub to
manage
the transition to DTF 7.1 for the 1.23 million streets held in the NSG and
3.07
million ESUs.

We have some further opportunities for improvement. As I outlined at the

Underpinning
Transformational Government conference, these include:
there are still a small number of creating authorities who have to migrate to
Dtf
7.1
some authorities also need to address the frequency of submissions to the hub
Additional Streets Data submissions
I'd also like to highlight that the LSG Custodian CoP offers a real community
resource
for you to share best practice and help one another out with issues.

This can be found here and is free to join if you are a MSA signatory
organisation:
[1]www.communities.idea.gov.uk/c/186249/home.do

I want to close by thanking you and congratulating you all for your hard work
over
the past year. I hope you all have an enjoyable Christmas break

Glenn Dobson, Chair of Regional LSG Chairs

[1] http://www.communities.idea.gov.uk/c/186249/home.do