The creation of a Digital National Asset Register forms part of the newly published Government Estate Strategy
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The government is to build a Digital National Asset Register to provide a comprehensive view of its property that it believes will help improve policymaking and delivery of public services.
The creation of the register was announced as part of the Government Estate Strategy published last week by the Cabinet Office. The register will bring together “local and national public property and land data in a common, accessible” database.
“Through the register, we will bring together this information with socio-economic data so that the future civil service and the public services we deliver are provided where they are most needed,” the strategy said.
The ultimate goal of creating DNAR will be to “provide a strategic view of all public estate and data to inform policy”.
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Alongside the implementation of the register, the Office of Government Property and HM Land Registry will expedite a project to register all publicly owned land, with work to be completed by 2022, rather than the previous deadline of 2025. Non-sensitive data that the government believes could be “useful to the public” will be published under an Open Government Licence.
“This ambitious project will join up data from hundreds of public sector entities under one strategic geospatial umbrella,” the strategy said. “The information produced will be used to inform strategic asset management, improve cross public sector collaboration, make it easier to find land for development, and assess cost, utilisation and environmental performance of a wider portfolio across more organisations.”
Geospatial analytics will be applied to data to ensure the government is “maximising the value” from the information it gathers on property and land. To help use this data “to create jobs and growth” those overseeing the estate strategy will work with the newly created Geospatial Commission and other government partners including Ordnance Survey, HM Land Registry, and the Digital Land Unit of the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government.
