Rational, efficient and well organized: New system of addresses in Moldova

by Diana Zaharia

March 19, 2018
thumbnail

Diana Zaharia is a former Senior Project Officer in the UNDP Project “Enhancing the democracy in Moldova through inclusive and transparent elections”. She has been involved in planning and implementation of modern technological developments in elections management. Diana has been working for 15 years in the development sector, intensifying her interest and research in this area and collaborating with many central public administration partners. 

Did you know that all local parks, markets, authorized parking places, petrol stations, cafés or supermarkets located on the national and local roads of Moldova do not have an address?

So, calling an ambulance to a playground located in a park, situated in the perimeters of 4 streets and explaining the way to get to the exact place of the accident, seems not an easy task. Till recently, the park was assigned only one address even though it had at least 4 main entry points from other different bounder streets. One had to give a lot of other hints to be as precise as possible so that the ambulance reaches the proper playground.

Something common for Moldova is that all streets in villages aren’t assigned an address either, even main ones. For example, Gura Galbenei village, Cimislia district, hosts a Center for Family Medicine and an intercommunal Firefighter and Rescue Service that cover six neighbor villages. Very often it takes some time to identify the exact location for intervention.

Ambulance in Gura Galbenei

Vechicle of the Firefighter and Rescue Service, Gura Galbenei

Mayor of Gura Galbenei, Victor Stina

Moreover, the Post Office clerks meet difficulties in finding certain people, as on the envelopes only recipients’ names are indicated, without addresses. “We have at the village hall an accountant and a tax inspector who are working here since the 1990s. They know the village very well and in these awkward situations we convene a meeting where we are trying to identify the person”, notes the mayor of Gura Galbenei, Victor Stina.

So, a performant system of addresses would considerably improve the delivery of local public services.

UNDP Moldova is a veritable supporter of the e-governance and has been involved in designing a modern system of addresses together with the Cadastre Central authorities of Moldova since 2015.

Being inspired by the Norwegian format of addresses, we helped the Moldovan authorities to develop a new law, regulation and a user guide on how to differently assign addresses to public roads, streets, buildings and houses. The law was adopted in July 2017.

The new system will become functional starting with 2019, when the State Register of Administrative - Territorial Units and Addresses, currently being upgraded, is prepared for use. So, all addresses assigned on the territory of Moldova will be recorded and kept in the respective register. The system will exchange free of charge data with other state IT systems, such as the State Register of Population, the State Register of Voters, and the State Register of Real Estates via the government interoperability platform. As for the latter, UNDP has offered its support in the development of the legal and regulatory framework on data exchange and interoperability of the digital content of state information registers.

The use of the same address data and template will significantly increase the efficiency of the Emergency Services (Ambulance, Police, Fire Department), Post Office, Population Registration and Documentation Services – all playing a key role in people’s security and life.

The addresses assigned according to the new system to buildings and public areas situated on regional and national roads will contain precise identifiers: e.g. Petrol Station, Ialoveni, Sociteni, R3, 4km, 2. This address will be decoded in the following way: Petrol Station situated on the national road R3, at 4 km and 200 meters from Sociteni village, Ialoveni rayon.

As well buildings with multiple entrances situated at the cross of two streets will have different addresses, depending on which street one or another entrance is heading to. For example, the Municipal Clinical Emergency Hospital of Chisinau, that is currently situated on 1, Toma Ciorba Str. is going to be assigned at least two addresses as per its two main entrances from two different streets.       

The new system of addresses will also help assigning more precisely the voters to the polling stations bringing more efficiency to the electoral processes in the country.