Now, government to start mapping your address digitally

The government wants to map your address — residential or professional — digitally, something done by Aadhaar for an individual's identification.

The department of posts - which is under the ministry of communications — has ordered a pilot project that will accord a six-character alphanumeric digital address for every property for three postal pin code locations.

The idea is to provide e-locations (like on Google Maps) for the addresses therein and then provide possibilities to link them to other information, such as property title and ownership, property tax records, information on utilities like electricity, water and gas.

The eLoc (e-location) pilot project has been approved for two postal pin codes in Delhi and one in Noida, following which the plan is to identify national expansion plans. The digital identity — say, UV77D7 — will be an e-enabled address that can be used parallelly to the existing postal address.

Private mapping company MapmyIndia will be carrying out the project for the postal department. 

"The results of the proof of concept may be utilised by the department towards developing a digital address format that would suit the purpose for a national-level project rollout," says a letter signed by additional director-general (mail operations) Abhishek Kumar Singh and sent to MapmyIndia on September 27.

MapmyIndia MD Rakesh Verma said the e-linkage would make it easier to identify complex addresses while providing an opportunity to link them to other amenities and services.

"eLoc will help travellers and commuters search, share and navigate to a destination's exact doorstep far more easily and quickly. It will also reduce time, money, fuel wastage and expenses for businesses in the e-commerce, transportation, logistics and field operations domains," said Verma.

Pilot project to evaluate digital addresses' effectiveness: DoP

Currently, a large number of addresses in the country are difficult to comprehend when read digitally. "For example, an address such as 147, Pocket XX, 2A, Janakpuri can be easily identified online by a digital address such as 8GDTYX. This can be further linked with other associated amenities such as property tax and ownership details, civic amenities etc," an official of the company said.

The approval letter (for the pilot) by the Department of Posts (DoP) said the objective of the project is to demonstrate the effectiveness of a digital addressing system.

"The sole ownership of the data/reports or any other documents generated/created in any electronic or physical form, during the course of the proof of concept, shall remain with the department," it said, prohibiting the private company from using the information for any commercial purpose.

The postal department would assist in the exercise through sharing of data on beat maps, verification of the information related to mapping of physical address with the digital addresses and facilitating interactions with their ground staff.

In a statement, Mapmy-India claimed that it already possesses an exhaustive digital address database that includes over 2 crore eLocs of individuals, businesses and government set-ups.

The statement said that the company has partnered Isro and its national satellite imagery service 'Bhuvan' to provide effective mapping coordinates.

Source:-The Times of India