Open Addresses - An end to the "Address Wars"?
It's finally happened. After the rise and fall of empires, the UK has created a republic of the people.
No, we haven't asked the Windsors to move on - what's actually happened is Open Addresses.
For anyone who hasn't read this blog before, I'll give you a one paragraph overview of the problem we've faced..
The UK is seen as a leader in Open Data. However, as virtually every decision made by government and businesses involves a 'place', the lack of an open list of places (an address dataset) has been a major problem. We have lots of commercial datasets such as Royal Mail PAF, Ordnance Survey AddressBase and a variety of local gazetteers and other datasets owned by government bodies. While choice is good, in this case the choice and (more importantly) the cost have created issues with uptake of accurate data, problems with matching and in short, chaos.
Now, finally, the issues caused by a lack of a free, open and accurate address source for government and business are being tackled. Today, Open Addresses has launched in public alpha. It's simple - they are using a number of already open sources and asking the public to add their own addresses to build a single base that can be made available to everyone for free use and re-use.
The challenge is a big one. Collecting the ~23m UK addresses and keeping them updated and accurate is not easy. The likes of Royal Mail don't always get it right (as anyone who's ever moved into a brand new house will know) and they have a fair bit of funding behind them. However, with a concerted effort from the community at large, Open Addresses have a fair chance.
So, how can you help?
1. Add your home and office address here. Of course, read the submission guidelines if you want to.
2. If you're technical, take a look at the bulk download and API to see if your business or product could make use of the data.
3. Support Open Addresses by tweeting, blogging and telling people about it. Crowd sourcing only works if you get a big crowd!
Open Addresses have been supported by the Open Data Institute and the Open Data User Group via their release of data fund.
No, we haven't asked the Windsors to move on - what's actually happened is Open Addresses.
For anyone who hasn't read this blog before, I'll give you a one paragraph overview of the problem we've faced..
The UK is seen as a leader in Open Data. However, as virtually every decision made by government and businesses involves a 'place', the lack of an open list of places (an address dataset) has been a major problem. We have lots of commercial datasets such as Royal Mail PAF, Ordnance Survey AddressBase and a variety of local gazetteers and other datasets owned by government bodies. While choice is good, in this case the choice and (more importantly) the cost have created issues with uptake of accurate data, problems with matching and in short, chaos.
Now, finally, the issues caused by a lack of a free, open and accurate address source for government and business are being tackled. Today, Open Addresses has launched in public alpha. It's simple - they are using a number of already open sources and asking the public to add their own addresses to build a single base that can be made available to everyone for free use and re-use.
The challenge is a big one. Collecting the ~23m UK addresses and keeping them updated and accurate is not easy. The likes of Royal Mail don't always get it right (as anyone who's ever moved into a brand new house will know) and they have a fair bit of funding behind them. However, with a concerted effort from the community at large, Open Addresses have a fair chance.
So, how can you help?
1. Add your home and office address here. Of course, read the submission guidelines if you want to.
2. If you're technical, take a look at the bulk download and API to see if your business or product could make use of the data.
3. Support Open Addresses by tweeting, blogging and telling people about it. Crowd sourcing only works if you get a big crowd!
Open Addresses have been supported by the Open Data Institute and the Open Data User Group via their release of data fund.
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