The public bodies and companies which control address and property
data in the UK have set up a secret project to better co-ordinate a
raft of e-government projects and improve the quality of online
services to the public.
Dubbed Project Acacia, after the archetypal street address, the
project brings together the Land Registry, Ordnance Survey,
Consignia the Registers of Scotland, and Whitehall's Improvement
and Development Agency.
One option under consideration by the group would be to link land
and address data - including the National Land and Property
Gazetteer and the Postal Address File - from the five organisations
into a more accessible national database.
One benefit of this would be to help to speed up the house-buying
process by streamlining the sharing of land and property data
between government departments and agencies.
The project will also try to hammer out agreement on the sensitive
issue of intellectual property rights for the sale of address
data.
However, industry experts claimed that the existence of Project
Acacia was an admission that a string of e-government projects were
failing. "This is a recognition that a series of past projects from
various government departments [that attempted] to achieve a
national address file have all failed to some extent," said Robert
James, an independent consultant who used to maintain the Postal
Addres File.
The target for getting all government services online by 2005 would
hinge on Project Acacia's success, he said.
Project Acacia, led by the Land Registry, does not yet have any
specific funding.
A spokesman for the Ordnance Survey said the organisations involved
were still exploring the key issues but denied it aim to replace
existing address data products.