In Australia, there are typically about 60,000 addresses created every three months.
Keeping on top of this constantly changing environment can prove to be a challenge for many government departments.
For the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) Government’s environment and planning department, it’s essential that development applications have correct block and section information.
Customer Experience and Design Operations Manager, Vladislav Munteanu, said the way they were asking for the information was causing inaccuracies that customer service officers were having to manually fix.
The ACT Government built address verification Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) into its online forms. With predictive text and autocomplete, the API suggests possible address matches as people type. Customers simply choose from the ‘Do you mean this address?’ suggestions.
“Prior to using Geoscape APIs, customers would go to a huge map and try to identify their block and section. Now they don’t need to do this. They just type their physical address and Geoscape’s address verification provides the block and section automatically.
“This was the first time we’ve ever been able to retrieve that information straight away for a physical address. It’s completely removed that manual effort for the customers and for our customer service officers as well.”
Before implementing Geoscape, the ACT Government had tried using other address validation services, but found they weren’t updated frequently enough.
“We had huge delays with other providers, sometimes it took up to a year to get new suburb data. With Geoscape we’re getting information that’s not older than 24 hours. It’s extremely good.
“And the documentation on Geoscape’s website is very easy for developers to understand.”
This is just the start of the ACT Government’s journey to more accurate address data.
“It was quite a success story. I get a lot of calls from people from other departments who require physical address information to ask about our experience.”
To find out how address verification can improve service delivery in local government, contact sales@geoscape.com.au.
