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Local Government - data integrity for local authorities

QAS for Local Government

Meeting Local Government initiatives such as Tell Us Once, Contact Point, Reducing Avoidable Contact (NI14) and Government Gateway means that Public Sector organisations need to concentrate on integrating systems and improving contact data management.

Read how Experian QAS can help your local authority. Download our QAS for Local Government brochure.

Creating and maintaining a shared services culture

Local government authorities are undertaking new approaches, such as the Tell Us Once initiative, to develop and maintain a shared services culture.

Data sharing is a critical element to the Transformational Government agenda. It is also essential that all privacy and data protection safeguards are in place to ensure that personal data is used in compliance with data protection legislation.

Full support from all stakeholders is required if initiatives are to be met. The National Land and Property Gazetteer (NLPG) initiative, aims to for councils to be customer focused, whilst using a single, definitive address database across all departments and all authorities.

Experian QAS products and services

Experian QAS can help local authorities in effective data sharing. Our data collection , cleaning and suppression tools will assist with the sharing and collaboration of data held on individuals.

Benefits include:

  • data collection tools to ensure accuracy across all authority touch points
  • cleaning and standardisation of your data to ensure you are sharing correct and up to date information
  • suppression of contact data to ensure you are not trying to contact citizens who have moved or deceased
  • paperless authentication processes
  • quick and accurate access to NLPG data
  • quick and easy integrations to meet government shared services targets

QAS Identify

QAS Identify uses reference data from Experian to match UK individuals. Duplicate contacts can be identified, even when the individual has moved house.


Organisation wide data integrity

A single citizen view

According to Tony Ellis, Chair of Data Connects group:

"Local authorities and their partners (both local and central) with powerful, well implemented Customer Data Management practices will be able to offer their customers a personalised service based on a complete understanding of their needs and preferences.
Better Customer Data Management has the potential to enable local public services to transform from a reactive, disparate service into a proactive and integrated set of services."

(Business Benefits of Customer Data Integration)

Experian products and services

Data held within a central master database can prevent wasted resources and ensure desired service levels. Contact data management solutions from Experian QAS can help work towards organisational wide data integrity:

Your database can also be enhanced with various data sets giving access to the following public sector codes:

  • European Electoral Regions
  • Westminster MP & political party
  • Parliamentary Constituency Name
  • Local Government Tiers
  • Local Education Authority Codes
  • District Health Authority
  • Primary Care/Local Health Groups

Use profiling and segmentation data such as MOSAIC from Experian, to analyse customer databases and to enhance your understanding of citizens across all local authorities.


Using your Gazetteer

Access to, and integrated use of the National Land and Property Gazetteer (NLPG), the Corporate Address Gazetteer (CAG) and the National Gazetteer for Scotland, enables the exchange of exact location information and knowledge across government departments.

Experian QAS work with all 410 local authorities in England and Wales, helping them with the challenge of trying to use the NLPG to drive efficiency gains.

QAS Gateway

QAS Gateway facilitates the use of governmental gazetteer data by seamlessly integrating into existing applications for a single standardised source of address data.

"QAS Gateway brings the NLPG and the National Gazetteer for Scotland within the reach of more departments. It allows consistent address search functionality to take place across all departments within an organisation, thereby reducing the overheads of searching for multiple databases and reducing the risks of inconsistent and duplicated errors."

Sarah Burnett, Senior Analyst, Butler Technology Assessment

By integrating gazetteers with QAS Gateway, local authorities are able to:

  • ensure the accuracy of new address data
  • prevent duplicate citizen records
  • verify and update existing data
  • link addresses/citizens across departments using a unique property reference number (UPRN)
  • append additional datasets

"We were keen to use QAS Gateway right across Brent council to improve the quality of the address information we hold. Improving address quality is an important part of our ongoing Client Index project which has built a true single citizen view of those living and working in the area. Introducing QAS software has enabled us to exploit our Local Land and Property Gazetteer and ensures we capture better quality data, first time."

Chris Waterman, Client Index Project Manager, London Borough of Brent.

Useful links

The ContactPoint directory and you

The start of 2009 saw the activation of the controversial online directory of children's services. ContactPoint reduces the time and effort spent in bringing people from different teams together, helping keep children safe.

Experian QAS worked alongside the Department for Children, Schools, and Families (DCSF) to produce the Local Data Quality Tool (LDQT) and match codes.
Our software generates the report provided by the DCSF, which details the quality of your data for ContactPoint.

By using QAS Batch councils can:

  • clean address data with easily formatted results
  • see which records have been amended
  • identify problem areas with the data

Identity Management and Assurance

The demand to move towards an e-government is shown by research that states two out of three people want to apply online for services, such as parking permits and council tax. Moving towards online identity verification requires confidence that your identity management processes are up to scratch.

Moving away from Paper ID will:

  • offer greater efficiencies
  • maximise the use of resource
  • allow citizens to self-service

The importance of electronic authentication is highlighted by Chris Bartlett, Head of Justice, and Homeland Security at Experian, who says:

"The Transformational Government report states that the Government must try to keep up with the pace of technological change to remain efficient and trustworthy. Electronic authentication of identify is a good example of how this can be done."

Experian QAS products

Our authentication solutions use an electronic, risk-based approach to authenticate a person's identity. Biographical data is compared against Experian data, the UK's largest database with over 1 billion records.

Useful links


Our customers

Our customer base within local government is varied and we have several case studies highlighting our relationship with such organisations. Click on the below examples for more information:

Our partner integrations

Experian QAS has well established Business Partner relationships with leading system integrators and applications providers, enabling us to provide fully supported integrations within and across local government authorities and councils.

Specifically within Local Government, we have established partnerships with Careworks, Initiate, Hopewiser, Datanomic, Northgate and OLM Group. We also hold valuable experience with working alongside System Integrators such as BT Healthcare, Logicalis, Axon, IBM and Fujitisu.

We have long standing and certified partnerships with SAP, Microsoft, Oracle and Salesforce.com.

Useful links


Resources for you

For more information on QAS Gateway:

For more information on identity verification in the Public Sector:





Software, data and services from Experian QAS