The 'go to' organisation for Local Government improvement in Scotland

The information comes from local authority functions which are the foundations for all address intelligence - including street naming and numbering, planning, and building standards.

Origins

The OSG dates back to 2003 and was created to support the delivery of modern public services in Scotland.

Validation

Local gazetteers are collated by the Spatial Information Service at the Improvement Service, where robust quality assurance is carried out. Consequently, the data adheres to nationally agreed conventions and the British standard.

Unique Property Reference Number

The OSG is freely available to members of the Public Sector Geospatial Agreement. It is used throughout the public sector including by the emergency services, ePlanning, myaccount, and the Energy Savings Trust. It also forms the foundation for Ordnance Survey’s AddressBase product suite in Scotland.

Benefits

• More efficient public services through centralised information source.
• Access to the most comprehensive and up-to-date addressing dataset in Scotland.
• High data currency and reliability.
• Robust change feedback mechanism for user confidence.
• Supports multiple government applications and links datasets.
• Allows non-spatial data to be incorporated into Geographical Information Systems for analysis.
• Access to the status of a property and important dates in its lifecycle.
• Access to added-value data associated with land and property.