Allow supplying of a cut-off date for historic countries

[adamliptrot-oc]

Often this will be used for supplying current or recent domicile data. As such historic countries will either not be wanted or else only a sub-set will be required. For example when address is required for a particular year, all historic countries which ceased to exist before that date would not be wanted in the results.

The ability to specify the cut-off date would mean users are not presented with potentially confusing options and services would not have to handle those erroneous results.

[tvararu]

Thanks for the feedback @adamliptrot-oc, we're actually building support for current countries right now. This is useful!

[michelleisme]

Thanks for your feedback @adamliptrot-oc,

Theo has now left GDS :( which is why I'm replying :)...

I can certainly see how and why the ability to specify a date for displaying records (e.g. only display countries that didn't have an end-date from 1998-2001) would be useful and it is something we are looking into as you are not the first person to have asked for this.

It's not, however, as straight forward as it sounds because we don't always have a comprehensive list of all historical data. For instance, some register custodians don't even record historical data and only start doing so (by adding end-dates to entries when they become redundant) from the point they have created a register with us. Where possible, we work with custodians to support them to identify and add historical data to their register - just like we have done with the country register (e.g. the entry for East Germany has an end date in 1990) - but this only goes back so far.

So, 1) I'd like to know how far you would need to go back in time for your services' needs and 2) is this something you definitely require now e.g. would it block you from using our location picker?

[adamliptrot-oc]

Hi @michelleisme We're dealing with inheritance tax and domicile at date of death, so for that scenario we'll only want countries which existed after April 2011 (due to tax changes). However the picker will also be used for current addresses for executors so will need to be scoped to current countries only.

If the date option is something you can give us an interface for in the json which we can build our service ready for, and then utilise when the feature is finished, that would be a great help.

[michelleisme]

Hi @adamliptrot-oc,

Thanks for explaining!

So, for the second scenario where you will use the picker for current addresses for executors - you will be able to use a version of the location picker that only pulls through active records (only displays countries that exist right now). My colleague, @endamccormack is about to start building that functionality :)

However, I still have a couple of questions about the first scenario - are you saying that you need a version of the location picker that only displays countries that were 'active' from April 2011 to the present day? Or was that just an example you provided and what you need is the ability to state a date (e.g 04/11 or some other date) but it will change depending on what a user has entered elsewhere in their journey through the service? Basically, does the data have any dependencies or is just records from 2011 onwards that you need?

I'm including my other colleague @nacnudus - our data scientist - so he can also follow up with you about this.

Lastly, with regards to the interface - the location picker comes with a simple UI 'widget'.. See this blog: https://designnotes.blog.gov.uk/2017/04/20/were-building-an-autocomplete

Also, in case you haven't seen it, check out this guidance about using the location picker: https://alphagov.github.io/openregister-location-picker

And, also, here's a demo: https://govuk-location-picker-demo.herokuapp.com

[adamliptrot-oc]

If someone enters a date (e.g. 5th Aug 2012) into our date field then we'd want to display a list of all countries which were 'active' from then until now.

The 2011 reference was the cut-off period for our requirements going backwards. We don't need any countries which ceased to exist prior to this date - that was in answer to the 'I'd like to know how far you would need to go back in time for your services' needs' question.

I'm aware of the autocomplete and have opened a few issues with them :)

[michelleisme]

Thanks for responding @adamliptrot-oc - my colleague is looking into how we can offer this, now. We will be in touch next week!

[edwardhorsford]

My suggestions for this based on the research we've done so far:

By default the location picker should only show current countries - no historic countries. This matches most other pickers, means less set up for the majority use case, and doesn't confuse service teams when things like 'USSR' show up in the list.

The picker can then have an option to enable historic countries, which could optionally allow passing in a start date.

NB - we've found that historic countries can be confusing to users in research - suggest #4 should happen near to this work.

[adamliptrot-oc]

@edwardhorsford that sounds like a good option and makes implementation simple for the most common use-cases

[michelleisme]

Hi both! We are currently working on doing just that - the default picker will display only current/active countries and territories but there will be an option for including historical data too, for those that need it.

[MatthewBurstein]

To save anyone else the trouble, in order to add these dates to the data we receive from the endpoint, the field will needed to be added in the generator here.

If I raise a PR for this is anyone able to deploy it?

[edwardhorsford]

Did any progress happen on this? It would be great if the defaults suggest above could be implemented.