NLPG at the Heart of Hackney's Award Winning Citizen Index

Because the NLPG is a national dataset the Citizen Index is also populated with information from neighbouring boroughs to ensure that Hackney's systems can cater for those who work but do not necessarily live in the borough.

The NLPG is run on behalf of local government by the Improvement and Development Agency (IDeA) with Intelligent Addressing (IA) as the national custodian.

The Citizen Index is at the core of a database project within Hackney Borough Council which has just won the âCustomer Access' category at this year's Local Government IT Excellence Awards organised by SOCITM (Society of IT Management). The primary aim of the Citizen Index is to improve service delivery to citizens through a single point of contact regardless of the service area. In the Call Centre alone there will be an anticipated 30% improvement in call handling times. By intelligently merging data from different Council sources including Revenue and Benefits, CRM, Housing, Parking and the National Land and Property Gazetteer, the Citizen's Index provides a single view of the borough's citizens which can be accessed and searched Council wide. Additions and editing of this information are made in seconds and immediately available to all council departments and systems.

Hackney Borough Council has mandated that all systems must be capable of integrating with three main data sources; GIS, the National Land and Property Gazetteer (NLPG) and the Citizens Index. As a result, every system used by the Council is now populated with the Unique Property Reference Number from the NLPG so each citizen reference is also associated with an address and precise geographic location. This is also important for the next stage of the project; the âMy Hackney' online self-service portal. This will also use the Citizen's Index enabling citizens to authenticate themselves and then conduct their business online. My Hackney will also provide a rich source of service and other Council information facilitated by maps and the citizen's precise location.

"The Citizen Index, is empowered through web services which enable any of our systems to integrate with it," said Ewa Plachta, Hackney's Data Manager. However the real power derives from our data management policy and the underlying quality of the core data of which the gazetteer is a prime example," continued Plachta.

20th November 2009

Notes to Editors:

The NLPG was initiated in 1999 to become the master address dataset for England and Wales and the central hub for the 376 address creating Local Authorities and their Local Land and Property Gazetteers (LLPGs). Based on twelve digit unique property reference numbers (UPRNs) the underlying principle of these gazetteers is to provide a single definitive address database for all departments and systems across a local authority in order to cut costs, improve efficiency and service delivery.

The NLPG is a joint venture between the Local Government Information House part of IDeA and Intelligent Addressing Limited.

Intelligent Addressing is a specialist private sector consultancy (an SME) employing recognised experts in addressing. It was originally set up to help develop the National Land and Property Gazetteer (NLPG) on behalf of local government and now manages the NLPG and NSG (National Street Gazetteer) central data hubs under the terms of the Mapping Services Agreement (MSA) with local government.

Intelligent Addressing contacts:

Gayle Gander, Head of Marketing | 0207 747 3500 | E-mail: [email protected] | www.intelligent-addressing.co.uk

The Improvement and Development Agency (IDeA) works in partnership with all councils, to enhance the performance of the best, accelerate the speed of improvement of the rest, and develop the sector as a whole.

Working in partnership with the local government community to develop national infrastructure projects that enable councils to deliver local services more effectively, LGIH acts as an intermediary between the public and the private sector enabling it to negotiate with private companies on behalf of local authorities in order to provide key parts of a technical infrastructure for improved service delivery.

IDeA contact:

Paul Bailey | Tel: 020 7296 6600 | Email: [email protected] | www.idea.gov.uk