Govt pledges £5m to beef up open data rival to PAF

MPs 2Chancellor George Osborne has pledged an additional £5m to build an open address register of all 29 million UK postal addresses and 1.8 million postcodes to replace the Postcode Address File which was sold off as part of Royal Mail’s privatisation.
There is one scheme – being run through openaddressesuk.org – which was launched in 2015 although it is not yet known whether this will be the beneficiary of the funding.
As far back as 2013, the Government’s now defunct Open Data User Group described national addresses as “the single most fundamental set of core-reference data we can identify”.
It argued making the data openly available would improve transparency, boost public sector efficiency, improve economic growth as the data can be used by businesses and reduce the cost and complexity of licensing.
Open Data Institute associate Peter Wells, said his organisation was “relieved” to hear the news as address data is a vital part of the UK’s data infrastructure. It will unlock an estimated £110m of value for UK businesses, charities and government.
“When the UK Government privatised the Royal Mail it lost control of address data. As well as the years of lost benefits, the UK now has to spend time and money rebuilding address data,” Wells said.
It will have to tough job replicating Royal Mail’s PAF database, however. Currently Royal Mail’s 65,000 posties capture thousands of address changes every day and the company offers daily, monthly and quarterly updates for the file, which contains more than 24 million separate address details.

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