Guideline for use of and content to be put into QR-code

A QR-code shall be placed on every sign

On address unit plates (building number plates) the QR-code will be visible on the front of the sign and will serve both government, business and public purposes

1. Ordered List Item Sign inspections
2. License inspections
3. Service/maintenance requests (checking a meter, performing a repair, verifying a visited location etc)
4. Conveniently find out where you are and what is around

On other signs, the QR-code will be placed on the backside and be intended primarily for inspection/technical purposes

• Sign inspections
• Recording damages, maintenance operations for signs

An option that is supported by all mobile phone QR-code scanners is to read and offer to open a URL in the onboard browser:

The URL should be something like

• https://address.gov.om/au/3e9484e5-462f-4bce-8452-550888d8271a

This URL should consist of four parts:

• “https”:
  • allows us to put a certificate that ensures the user that information actually comes from a trusted source).
  • tells the built-in QR-code scanner in smart phones that the content is a URL and will offer to open it in the device browser
• A domain name
  • e.g. “address.gov.om”
  • It is important to choose a name that does not need to change as it will be impracticable to replace the code on all signs
  • a neutral domain name that can work regardless who owns the addressing system should be considered
  • the suffix .gov.om should be considered as it increases trust in the URL.
  • the same domain name for the top level domain .om should also be purchased and secured to avoid scamming
• A namespace “au” that tells what type of object the id is valid for, allowing lookup into different table.
  • Example values for namespace could include:
    • sn = street name sign
    • au = address unit sign
    • etc
• Id the object, a universally unique identifier string (UUID)
  • e.g. 3e9484e5-462f-4bce-8452-550888d8271a
  • a UUID is a unique string sequence consisting of 36 characters in 5 groups separated by hyphens

When loading this URL, the user should be presented with a page that shows the location as well as all information about the current address.

For applications like sign management and various inspections and service delivery operations, the QR-code can be scanned and the application can determine if to store the ID part, i.e. the 4th part of the URL above - or whether to load the URL and extract structured metadata from the end-point.

The end-point must implement the Http header “Accept”.

• If nothing or “text/html” is supplied for this header, an end-user web site should be returned.
• If “application/json” is supplied, a structured JSON document should be returned