Latest authoritative list for government organisations becomes available in alpha format
The General Register Office (GRO) and Government Digital Service (GDS) have developed an alpha version of a register of registration districts – the administrative areas for the registration of births, deaths, marriages and civil partnerships – in the UK.
It is the latest step in the programme to develop a series of registers as single, authoritative lists of information for government, as part of the national public sector data infrastructure.
Rachel Sutherden, a senior business analyst in the registers team at GDS, says in a blog that the effort has been concentrated on listing districts rather than local register offices as the latter are often located in other public authority buildings, the details of which are maintained locally rather than by the GRO.
The alpha has been launched and the team is now taking feedback on usability and will change the dataset if needed. Once this is complete it will be moved to beta for use in live services.
Sutherden said that GDS and GRO plan to look at the possibility of creating other registers.
The project follows the creation of a country register by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and one of local authorities by the Department for Communities and Local Government. They are designed to provide a consistent approach to presenting key data - in this case the names of entities - throughout government.
