As countries such as UK and Australia establish geocoded national
address databases, it will be easier to "bind" individuals to
specific addresses, for all sorts of purposes relating to identity
and marketing, etc.

The UK version is the National Spatial Address Infrastructure (NSAI)
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News Release 2005/0103:
26 May 2005

ODPM ANNOUNCES PLANS FOR BRITAIN'S NATIONAL SPATIAL ADDRESS INFRASTRUCTURE

Plans for a new national, high-quality spatial address infrastructure
building on the work already undertaken by Ordnance Survey and Local
Government are today announced by the Office of the Deputy Prime
Minister (ODPM), Ordnance Survey and the Improvement and Development
Agency (IDeA) for local government.

The aim is to provide a single national database that will be
maintained through a partnership approach and a collaborative
framework of address and property identifiers. This will be developed
and operated by Ordnance Survey in partnership with local and central
government. It will build on the work already undertaken by the
National Land and Property Gazetteer (NLPG), Royal Mail and Ordnance
Survey. A joint prospectus issued today and available on ODPM's
website describes the proposal in more detail and seeks comments from
interested parties.

The database, currently to be known as the National Spatial Address
Infrastructure (NSAI), will support a wide range of services delivered
by central and local government and the private sector. In government
for example, the NSAI will improve the address base for the processing
of benefits claims, the management and collection of local taxation,
the next population census, as well as supporting the delivery of
services such as police, fire and social care. For local authorities
it will also complement arrangements under the new Mapping Services
Agreement, released today.

(snip)

The infrastructure will build on Local Land and Property Gazetteers
(LLPGs), the NLPG, the National Street Gazetteer, the Postcode Address
File (PAF) and Ordnance Survey AddressPoint. NSAI will draw on the
expertise of stakeholders including local authorities, Royal Mail
Group plc, Office for National Statistics and Valuation Office Agency.

(snip)

Vanessa Lawrence, Ordnance SurveyAEs Director General and Chief
Executive, said:

"The NSAI will create one definitive geographically based address
infrastructure which will increase operational efficiency for both the
public and private sectors by ensuring information is consistently
linked to the correct addresses."

(snip)

Source: UK Office of the Deputy Prime Minister
http://www.odpm.gov.uk/pns/displaypn.cgi?pn_id=2005_0103
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A search on "National Spatial Address Infrastructure" in Australia
comes up with the "Street Address Working Group", which in turn
mentions Geospend, which is associated with Australia Post & sends
out questionnaires asking householders many questions about their
lifestyles, which they can flog to marketers. (From memory, it is
called "Australian Lifestyle Survey", which I bin if I get one)

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Street Address Working Group

Issues Affecting Construction of a Geocoded Address File Authors -
Geocoding Reference Subgroup
Executive Summary

This paper analyses the demand and scope for Australia to progress the
creation of a geocoded address file and provides options and
recommendations on how this should occur. The paper specifically deals
with the georeferencing aspects and what form a geocode relationship
can have to address, property and built infrastructure. 

(snip)

The PSMA has been supported by Australia Post and GEOSPEND (AP&G) in that 
time to pilot various trials for assembly of this data. To this point 
however, the investigations have centred on the data sources, data 
acquisition and data cleansing methodologies and to a lesser extent cost 
modelling for capture and data maintenance processes.

(snip)

Source (Aust) Intergovernmental Committee on Surveying and Mapping
http://www.icsm.gov.au/icsm/street/geocode_construction.htm

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Add Geospend to the search ( National Spatial Address Infrastructure 
Geospend) and up comes ...

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A Geocoded National Address File for Australia:
The G-NAF What, Why, Who and When

PDF - http://www.g-naf.com.au/_lib/downloads/G-NAF_What_Why_Who_When.pdf

http://www.g-naf.com.au/

The "About" for the G-NAF claims that it has been described as the
"holy grail of address lists", among other things. A powerful tool
for spammers and scammers, among others.

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The G-NAF, or Geocoded National Address File has realised the creation 
and maintenance of a single authoritative Geocoded database of reference 
in Australia for street address data. Words such as "authoritative", 
"fundamental" and "holy grail of address lists" have been used 
to describe G-NAF.

(snip)

http://www.g-naf.com.au/about.htm
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Add in other things such as the National Metering Identifier (NMI),
used to bind electricity meters with specific addresses, fixed line
phones, gps-enabled mobiles, e-tags for tollways, and ultimately
the Mark, and there will be few places to be without someone knowing
about it.

Cheers, Steve..

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