Meaningful Metadata

What metadata is important to you?

Matt Ramsay
AddressFinder
2 min readSep 18, 2019

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We get requests from people who want us to include new address attributes in our database. These requests usually come from current customers wanting to gain more information from our service, which is great. Additions require development, and ongoing maintenance, so we seek to understand if the additional data would be widely used.

What do people ask for?

Recently, we’ve had requests for these address metadata attributes:

  • NZDep2013 Deciles & Quintiles — A census-related measurement of socio-economic deprivation across New Zealand (10% & 20% grouping). This could be used as an indicator of the wealth of the occupants of an address.
  • DHB Zone — The District Health Board zone in which an address sits.
  • Parcel ID — The ID of the land parcel related to an address. This can be used to link an address to a property boundary/title or ownership data.

How do we decide?

Before we make additions to the address attributes currently available, we ask these questions:

  1. Is this data available, accurate and reliable. Will it continue to be?
  2. Will it be difficult to add it?
  3. Does this data add value to our service?
  4. Will this data be useful for other customers or just one?

What do you think?

You use our address data every day. We can usually answer the first two questions but the last two rely on customer feedback.

Do any of the latest requests appeal to you? Do you have requests? Get in touch and let us know. Your feedback is likely to influence outcomes and decisions ahead.

Survey form

support@addressfinder.nz

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