Birmingham City Council chooses Aligned Assets

Aligned Assets can today announce Service Birmingham as their latest gazetteer customer.

Birmingham CC is the largest local authority in Europe responsible for nearly one million people and Service Birmingham is their joint venture with Capita Business Services through which is provided world-class information and communications technology (ICT) systems.

As the final authority to sign up to the National Land and Property Gazetteer (NLPG), Service Birmingham will be using Aligned Assets’ Symphony Suite software to construct their Local Land and Property Gazetteer (LLPG).

In addition to the iManage gazetteer management module, Service Birmingham will also be taking advantage of Symphony iMatch, which will allow them to match all other address datasets to the LLPG. This will allow for the BS7666 standard that is applied to the LLPG to be utilised for the electoral Roll, council tax and benefits – something that central government is pushing towards.

Symphony iExchange will allow them to share the LLPG data with internal and external sources, including the National Land and Property Gazetteer (NLPG), whilst full quality checking of their data will be made simple using Symphony iValidate.

Symphony iSearchWeb will allow them Authority-wide accessing of the LLPG data and built into their version of iManage will be the new Street Naming and Numbering module that will allow them to manage the complete lifecycle of naming a street or numbering a property.

“We are very excited by the prospect of working with Birmingham City Council,” said Aligned Assets’ Commercial Director Phil Gee, “In addition to over 80 local authority clients, we are also the chosen supplier to the British Transport Police, Transport for London and the FiReControl Project. With Birmingham as a client we are now truly recognised as being the number one for gazetteers.”

www.aligned-assets.co.uk

Transforming Local Service Delivery

For several years now the emphasis within local authorities has been about treating members of the public as customers and what these customers want delivered are quality local services. This expectation only increases with all the stories of rising council tax bills splashed almost daily across the news; yet despite this, one would struggle to find a single council that does not have to make harsh decisions in order to balance its books.

So with less money for services yet an ever-increasing demand for them, what is a council to do? The answer is simple – get more from less; increase efficiency. However, with only a set number of hours in the day and council employees, like the majority of public sector workers, already pushed to the limit, this greater level of efficiency cannot be achieved through the people, but instead through the processes and systems that they use.

Efficiency drives are not a new thing though and all the major political parties squabble to be seen as the one that will bring efficiency back to the public sector. Lord Heseltine, former deputy leader of the Conservative Party even went so far as to suggest that his party saw it as “a bloated, badly run, inefficient impost on the taxpayers back.” Yet for all the political posturing, most of the time the politicians have little concept of how this desired efficiency will actually be achieved.

It is therefore not so surprising that one initiative that is achieving at a local level is doing so not because it was intended to, but as a consequence of its design.

Efficiencies Found

It was in 1990 that the Local Government Management Board devised the concept of the National Land and Property Gazetteer (NLPG), later standardised through British Standard BS7666. This required all local councils to produce and maintain their own Local Land and Property Gazetteers (LLPGs), which were amalgamated to produce the national dataset. Now completed, the NLPG can be considered a ‘super gazetteer’, with uses being found in the emergency services and shortly in the commercial sector.

Though the LLPGs were initially conceived as feeders for the NLPG, the local authorities that created them are now also beginning to reap the rewards. The 2006 findings of the Centre for Economics and Business Research showed that:

- The NLPG could save local government in England and Wales alone at least £54.4 million per annum
- This saving only takes account of the benefits to the 376 local authorities in England and Wales that have responsibility for crating an LLPG [i.e. the total saving could be far higher].
- Project evaluation shows that over a ten year period, the benefit‐cost ratio of the NLPG to local government alone could amount to 3.3 : 1.

Though the average costs of setting up an LLPG were estimated to be £34,000 and the running costs will be £40,000 per annum, on the financial front there is clear evidence that significant savings will be made, despite the costs.

Money though is not everything and does not in itself lead to the efficiency benefits that are sought. A subsidiary effect of the LLPG was that it forced local authorities into a process of standardisation, which though initially conceived so that all data spoke the same language for the purpose of the NLPG, now means that internally each council has their own centralised address database.

Previously this data could have been stored across different departments, which could lead to duplication and inaccuracies, both of which, through the LLPG, are now things of the past.

Greater Integration

The LLPG might be up to date and accurate, but still it is currently only an address database. With roughly 85% of all council data having an address component, its use and importance is clear, but with different departments having their own unique data requirements, it is evident that something more is required.

These departments will maintain databases for their specific needs, often with their own address components, that may overtime become out of date. To maintain both the accuracy of these records in addition to their uniqueness their integration with the LLPG becomes hugely significant.

To create this integration many local authorities have teamed up with gazetteer specialists Aligned Assets, utilising a piece of software called iMatch. Working as the complete integrator of systems, iMatch acts as a bridge between the LLPG and other departments, allowing information between systems to be matched together and the accuracy of the LLPG then implanted into those other datasets.

Additionally, the unique property reference numbers (UPRNs) attributed to each property within the LLPG can then be linked within these legacy systems, removing the duplication of records and allowing all the council to be singing from the same hymn sheet. iMatch can then geocode the legacy systems giving what was a simple database of information a spatial component.

This joined up thinking, in turn leading to joined up systems all speaking the same language, enables existing tasks to be performed more quickly and with a higher degree of accuracy. Not only this but departments, through this greater integration, are now able to offer services that previously were not available.

Into the Future

Soon technology will be moving the LLPG into new territory as it soon will be able to move beyond simple geocoded address data with the introduction of the pioneering Xtended Data Module (XDM) from Aligned Assets. Originally designed for use within the new FiReControl Project, its uses within Local Government will start to become apparent with the imminent launch of it commercially.

What the XDM allows is the adding of an infinite amount of additional information to be held against each record within the LLPG, meaning that this data becomes only one click away. Such information can be the council tax band of the property, date of fire safety checks, flood risk level, even the bin day can be added. With this the LLPG has the potential of becoming the most powerful tool within a council’s artillery.

Conclusion

Efficiency can take on many forms and whilst the LLPG is not the be all and end all of efficiency it is certainly a large step in the right direction. Through its greater usage and integration into all council systems efficiency will be increased and local service delivery will be fully transformed.

Aligned Assets in the Media

Aligned Assets has recently been featured in publications. To read the articles, please click on the links below.

Geoconnexion International May 2008

GIS Professional April 2008