Central Address Database

[Thomas Lee <ytlee@cecid.hku.hk>]

Dear eGov TC,

I'd like to seek your advice on building a central address database to 
facilitate e-government applications. The central address database 
essentially intends to record every valid address in the city so that 
computer validation on address input from e-government applications is 
possible. Also the address database can be used to perform geographical 
data analysis, e.g. census data.

In Hong Kong, the Government is finalizing the standard formats (XML 
Schema)  for representing address information for sharing. However, this 
is only at the syntax level but can't cater for the data semantics and 
correctness. We're looking at the value and feasibility to build a 
central address database although various departmental address databases 
(which are not aligned with each other, e.g. storing addresses in 
different formats) do already exist in different agencies, e.g. Post 
Office, for their own work purposes.

We'd like to see if you have any views on this, e.g. regarding the 
following questions.

1) does your government own this central aligned address database? how 
is it be used?

2) is the address database linked to digital maps ?

3) is the address database 2-D or 3-D, i.e. does it have floor and 
property unit information ?

4) what is the business model for maintaining and offering the address 
database ?  e.g. is it a public-private-partnership arrangement ?

5) what agencies (both public and private) are involved in the 
maintenance of the address database (i.e. who are the data contributors 
and what data do they contribute), and what is the role / responsibility 
and workflow between them ?

6) how much effort / resource do these agencies put in to maintain the 
address database ?

7) is there any revenue gained from the address database, e.g. from the 
sale of the database to the private sector ?   if so what percentage of 
the expenditure can they recover ?

8) how to convince top management that this is a necessary 
infrastructure and the government should invest in this infrastructure 
for the benefit of the government and the entire community ?

9) what applications are doing or planning to do address validation base 
on the address database ?

10) apart from enabling address validation, are they any other usage of 
the address database ?

Thanks in advance for your valuable information.

Best Regards,

Thomas

-- 
Thomas Lee
Chief Technology Officer
Center for E-Commerce Infrastructure Development
The University of Hong Kong
mailto:ytlee@cecid.hku.hk
http://www.cecid.hku.hk
(852) 2241 5388
(852) 2547 4611 (FAX)