Changing stakeholder influences in managing authoritative information – the case of the Centraal ReferentieAdressenBestand (CRAB) in Flanders

Abstract

Municipalities are typically responsible for maintaining address data. Building and maintaining regional or national datasets from local sources requires careful coordination among stakeholders. The Centraal ReferentieadressenBestand (CRAB) is a digital authoritative address dataset, also referred to as a register, for the Flemish Region in Belgium. We present an analysis of the influence of CRAB stakeholders before and after the merger between the agencies responsible for geospatial information and e-government, respectively. Tensions between stakeholders who create and maintain address data locally and those with an interest in the data for a larger area are discussed, and how these changed after the merger.