GeoPlace Annual Conference Announces Speakers

A somewhat controversial theme will take centre stage at the annual GeoPlace conference on the 11^th May at Leeds United Football Club. Jon Franklin, Head of Data & Information Strategy Valuation Office Agency will discuss “Why I hate addresses”. On the face of it an interesting presentation at a conference aimed at address, street and geographic information experts in the UK! Jon’s presentation will highlight the complexities and challenges that organisations face in developing and managing large property databases and why the work that local councils do is central in bringing order into this chaos.

Presentations from the Office for National Statistics, the Land Registry and The Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy will emphasise the requirement for quality addressing in national initiatives such as the 2021 census, the digital national local land charges register and in identifying fraud and error in business rates collection respectively.

Eddie Copeland, Director of Government Innovation at NESTA will talk to the overall conference theme of ‘Connecting data for better outcomes’, highlighting how address and street information helps with decision making about service delivery, targeting scarce resources at areas of greatest need and predicting and preventing social problems.

Jerry McConkey, CEO of the Joint Authorities Group (UK) will underline how data from local highways authorities reduces congestion and increases network availability. He will discuss the ways in which the government has signalled its intention to change the way in which it manages and uses data and as well as plans and communicates about streetworks. With 38 Million licence holders in the UK, congestion and better management of street activities are high on the political agenda.

The conference will also feature 20 additional discussion sessions on a wide range of topics around data which delegates can pick-and choose to create their personalised agenda for the day.

Richard Mason, Managing Director of GeoPlace said: “We are delighted to announce such a provocative programme for our conference this year. Attendees at the conference are the people in local councils with statutory responsibility for naming and numbering properties and building and maintaining a local register of address and street information. These local registers are collected from every council by GeoPlace, amalgamated into one national register and used right across the whole of government for data sharing, linking and interoperability. It’s absolutely necessary that GeoPlace provides the support and mechanism for people to come together to discuss the programme for the development of these datasets.”