Croydon, UK, 10 June 2013 – Computer software implemented at North Devon Council is revolutionising the management of council information allowing faster access to records held across different departments. The gazetteer management software, developed by GGP Systems, allows the council to create new addresses and amend existing data to national standards and then link this data for live use in other systems such as those used by Planning, Environmental Health and the Council’s Customer Management System.
Since adopting GGP NGz North Devon Council has achieved a ‘gold standard’ for the quality and currency of it’s gazetteer and has plans to further integrate the data with other Council systems. “We carried out an extensive review of all systems on the market before selecting GGP NGz,” commented Paul Trodd, GIS Analyst / Programmer at North Devon Council. “GGP NGz offered all the functionality we required, allows us to comply with changing legislation and provides excellent value for money.”
Using GGP NGz North Devon Council has created and is maintaining a ‘gold’ standard gazetteer. To achieve this standard the Council has to send daily updates to the National Hub allowing reuse of the data by other organisations such as the County Council, Police and Fire and Rescue Service. The Council must also achieve high levels of data matching to other sources, for example Valuation Office data, and maintain consistent levels of locational accuracy and property classification.
GGP NGz has also facilitated the use of the address data throughout the organisation. The Council’s planning system has a live link to NGz, as does their Geographic Information System (GIS) and licensing software, so any changes to the address data are immediately visible to users of these systems. The Environmental Health system, CRM software and Electoral Registration system also receive regular data updates and a project to complete integration with their Council Tax software is in the final stages of completion.
“Using GGP software our gazetteer has become the central hub for services that require addresses with links to all major systems,” continued Trodd. “We now have complete data integrity, no data duplication and of course as all systems are using the same data it is much easier to cross reference information. The combination of technology and lots of hard work has enabled us to achieve a 100 per cent match with our Council Tax records, a 99.9 per cent match with the Postal Addresss File (PAF) and a 99.13 per cent match with our Business Rates data.”
Contacts:
Reader enquiries to GGP Systems on tel +044 (0)208 686 9887
Editorial enquiries, contact Robert Peel on tel +44 (0)1666 823306
Colour separation requests to robert@market-it.co.uk
Notes for editors:
GGP NGz software has been specifically developed to ensure a consistent, up to date and accurate base for all property based information within an organisation. GGP NGz also manages the import and export of data between the local authority databases and the NLPG, the national hub, and the complete product suite was one of the first two software solutions to receive accreditation for address data transfer (DTF 7.3), is fully compliant with BS7666 and users of GGP software regularly achieve recognition at the national NLPG Exemplar Awards.
GGP Systems specialise in GIS and Gazetteer Management solutions specifically designed for the UK public sector. The South London based company provides easy to use software for the creation and management of corporate property databases, the ability to add and use a spatial element to all location based information and a range of solutions to meet both national and international Government directives.
