Connecting Data for Better Outcomes - GeoPlace Conference 2017

The GeoPlace Annual Conference took place on 11 May 2017 at the grounds of the Leeds United Football Club. The programme included networking, roundtable discussion sessions and speakers like Eddie Copeland (director of Government Innovation at the Nesta Innovation Lab), council officers, the Valuation Office Agency, the Land Registry and the Chartered Institute of Public Finance & Accountancy (CIPFA). And of course, the stage was for the award winners!

The Exemplar Award is awarded to a council for the best example or demonstration of local address and/or street datasets providing quantifiable benefits. This year, the winner was Northumberland County Council for its pilot project rolling out 30 hours' free childcare a year in advance of full availability nationally, doubling the existing free childcare for 3-4-year-olds. Using the Unique Property Reference Number (UPRN) from its local address data, the council developed an up-to-date, digital solution to reduce the administration processes needed to secure efficient implementation of this new statutory duty and respond to parents' applications swiftly. As a result, over 675 families have been able to access additional childcare support, with the average saving of £2,131.80 per household.

The winner of the Peer Award is Rachel Antcliffe from Leeds City Council. Rachel has been an LLPG Custodian for many years, always achieving ‘Gold' status and Best in Region for several years. She is an active member of the addressing community – being deputy chair for many years and working on the Improvement Schedule working group. She is always willing to share best practise, offer advice and guidance to anyone who may need it.

A key focus of the 2017 Exemplar Awards is on those Custodians who have invested time in creating and continually improving their processes and who have made and achieved a real commitment to improving both the accuracy and quality of the data submitted to the GeoPlace hubs. These authorities are recognised within the Data Quality and Improvement Awards.

Data Quality and Improvement Awards

South Mole Valley District Council and the Royal Borough of Greenwich were announced as winners of the Data Quality and Improvement Award for Addresses 2017 and the Data Quality and Improvement Award for Streets 2017 respectively. Awards were also presented for Best Address Data in Region and Best Street Data in Region together with Awards for those at ‘Gold' Standard.

The Most Improved Address Data Award is given to the authority which has shown the most improvement over the last year in England and Wales. In presenting the Award to Mole Valley, Jason Houghton, Deputy National Address Data Manager, mentioned that Mole Valley has achieved the greatest improvement in data quality which demonstrates excellence and commitment to a process that brings local and national benefits.

Royal Borough of Greenwich went home with the Data Quality & Improvement Award in recognition of the management of its street information database. Street data is used within councils and incorporated into a national Highways dataset – Ordnance Survey's Highways Network. The resulting data is a combination of data from local highway authorities via the National Street Gazetteer, Highways England data from the Trunk Road Street Gazetteer and accurate detailed geometry and additional road content from OS. This is why the Data Quality & Improvement Award is important. It is testament to the hard work and skill that goes into maintaining a constantly changing dataset. The Award is given to the authority which has shown the most improvement over the last year in England and Wales.

This article was published in GIS Professional June 2017