Unified Address Lookup Service

Isle of Man Government Technology Services

Project Brief

Create a single service to unify address lookup for use throughout the organisation. The service should search against the internal Address Gazetteer and AFD Postcode Anywhere. Any Isle of Man addresses must initially be sought against the Address Gazetteer and if no match is found then against AFD. UK or rest of the world addresses should use AFD.

The Isle of Man addresses returned via the Gazette should return geolocation data and the Universal Property Reference Number (UPRN) for the address.

In addition to the lookup service, a means of keeping matched addresses up to date should also be provided to ensure addresses are always current and as accurate as possible.

Solution Implemented

We choose to deliver this solution as a restful ASP.NET Web API 2 services. The service has been stripped back to a handful of public methods to speed integration into line of business applications within the government's digital estate. Developer focused lightweight documentation has been provided as has a reference application/test hardness.

The entire focus of this project has been on creating a lightweight, reusable developer friendly service that deals with the complexity of the Address Gazetteer and AFD systems.

SQL Server is used to provide logging and usage reporting.

The first integration was carried out by our team into Dynamics CRM, other teams and 3rd parties have successfully integrated the service into their applications within the government.