Customer focus drives innovative partnerships

A customer-focus approach to service delivery often requires innovative working relationships. An initiative that highlights the NLPG’s facility as an addressing framework for different organisations to work together is the pilot project LondonCABI (London Council Information from A to B).

Recognising that clients’ information needs sometimes cross council boundaries, CABI is a London Central Partnership pilot of five London borough authorities, which aims to deliver a cross-boundary information service to citizens through web-based maps. This means that the CABI information service should look, to its users, like it is derived from one seamless dataset, with the NLPG data exported in data transfer format to a central depository that it is running live.

The same information will be used to help the boroughs tackle common priorities such as social inclusion, polarities in income and deprivation, and fear of crime.

The partnership is also keen to share this information with other organisations such as the Greater London Authority and Transport for London, explains Dave Yarwood, GIS Project Manager of CABI’s lead partner, the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea.

"The CABI project seeks to demonstrate that the combined information of five local authorities is more powerful and relevant to customers than an authority-by-authority view, particularly in large metropolitan areas like London. The project will act as a proof of concept that the partners can work together to share geographical data using open standards, and to create a framework to which other London boroughs could subscribe in time."

This is one of many pan-authority initiatives in development around the country that are using the NLPG to link data to develop regional services.