Intelligent Addressing Helps Get Out The Vote

14 August 2008, 8:59am

Intelligent Addressing (IA) has launched a new service that will help Local Authorities convert their Electoral Registers to the National Addressing standard, BS7666 and match these records to the NLPG (National Land and Property Gazetteer). This is a requirement of the recently issued Ministry of Justice (MOJ) data standards directive. The directive is designed to improve the quality and integrity of electoral registers, help in detecting certain types of fraud and move towards the future implementation of the Co-ordinated Online Record of Electors (CORE).

Being included in an Electoral Register is the only way members of the public can vote in local, national or European elections in the UK. A high quality Electoral Register represents the single most effective way of ‘getting out the vote’. The MOJ directive follows a recommendation by the Electoral Commission following lengthy consultation with the Ministry of Justice, Political Parties, Electoral Registration Officers (EROs) and software suppliers.

IA’s new service is aimed at helping EROs in each Local Authority bring their electoral data up to the required standard. This involves the initiation of a five stage process, which checks data integrity, converts it to BS 7666 format, matches it to the NLPG, and provides a detailed report suggesting options on how Authorities should proceed. This may involve IA creating new UPRNS (unique property reference numbers) where they are missing. Any further anomalies are resolved between the EROs and the Local Authority Local Land and Property Gazetteer (LLPG) Custodians in order that the MOJ December 2009 deadline can be met. IA is also working closely with Electoral Register software suppliers to ensure their systems can fully support the new data standard.

This activity is crucial to the future implementation of the Co-ordinated Online Record of Electors (CORE). The key objectives of CORE are to facilitate effective checking of political party donations and to assist in the detection of certain types of electoral fraud.

“We have developed this analysis process and workflow to facilitate the conversion of Electoral Registers to BS 7666, and their subsequent matching to the NLPG,” said Michael Nicholson, Managing Director of Intelligent Addressing. “The CORE project for a national online database of electors is directly analogous to the NLPG, a national online database of addresses that we as custodians of the NLPG understand extremely well,” continued Nicholson.

Contact: Gayle Gander, Head of Marketing
+44 (0)207 747 3500
E-mail: ggander@intelligent-addressing.co.uk
www.nlpg.org.uk
www.intelligent-addressing.co.uk

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