January 11, 2010

The Arkansas Geographic Information Office announced today that ZIP+4® centroid coordinates and physical address points (for available counties) have been published and are available for consumption on GeoStor.

The ZIP+4® centroids are created from a United States Postal Service monthly subscription by the Department of Finance and Administration (DFA), Excise Tax Division,  in response to the national Streamlined Sales and Use Tax initiative.

DFA streamline database contractors geocoded and then manually edited the ZIP+4® dataset to correspond to the Arkansas Centerline File segment it represents. This data depicts over 550,000 unique records that include attributes for the ZIP+4® numbers.  The data is used to assist DFA in assigning the correct sales tax rate to the source jurisdiction.

At the same time a number of cities and counties have produced address points.  This data represents the coordinate and the address only.  The counties are primarily using these for E9-1-1 dispatching.  The data are being used by DFA to improve the accuracy of the streamlined sales tax collections.  The data are published following the Federal Geographic Data Committee DRAFT Street Address Data Standard. The Streamlined Sales Tax team helped organize the address data and is assisting other counties in the address production.

Until now, the data had only been used to drive tabular queries at DFA’s On-line Tax Rate Lookup service. AGIO and participating counties recognized the value of the dataset as a tremendous source index for GIS users to create geocoding services.  The data are slowly being built, and with the near statewide completion of the Arkansas Centerline File that data needed to be published.  AGIO recommended the data be loaded to the Arkansas Geographic Information Systems Board at its last meeting of 2009 and the recommendations were approved.  Another benefactor of the address data will be the state’s broadband mapping initiative which has a goal to identify where broadband exists in rural areas.

State Geographic Information Officer Shelby Johnson said, “I think our GIS users will be amazed at the massive undertaking DFA took on to assemble this data.  What they have done will really help improve the quality of geocoding services.  But, the real benefit is for those cities and counties knowing they will have a better chance of collecting every dime they are entitled to through Streamlined Sales Tax.”

This information is published by the Arkansas Geographic Information Office, an Arkansas state government agency, which holds a non-exclusive license from the United States Postal Service to publish the information. The ZIP+4® product is a registered trademark of the United States Postal Service.