National Postcodes to be introduced

yuloni

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my3cents

yuloni wrote: »

This post has been deleted.

The problem as you know full well is that we don't have unique addresses in many areas so the postman has to deliver to the householder.

Well done An Post is all I can say.

Carawaystick

antoinolachtnai wrote: »

How are the unique eircodes going to be delivered accurately to every non-unique address? How is the correct delivery going to be verified?

Surely an eircode will be decoded to a lat/long position of enough precision to separate 2 addresses with doors separated by a jack wall?

Send a postcard, so the postman can check?



Although I can see a bit of a bootstrapping issue, if an post have any errors in their database.

Sam Russell

How do you deliver a parcel to A67 XGET when you get to a group of houses in a rural townland, with identical houses spread about up side lanes and hidden behind hedges? If you do not have some kind of satnav, it is going to be impossible. You still need non-unique addresses, with house numbers and street names. Even white van drivers are human, and this system is not human friendly.

I do not think this Eircode is going to work any better than if it did not exist.

Sam Russell

Sam Russell wrote: »

How do you deliver a parcel to A67 XGET when you get to a group of houses in a rural townland, with identical houses spread about up side lanes and hidden behind hedges? If you do not have some kind of satnav, it is going to be impossible. You still need non-unique addresses, with house numbers and street names. Even white van drivers are human, and this system is not human friendly.

I do not think this Eircode is going to work any better than if it did not exist.

Well short of demanding that a (locally) unique visual identifier be placed at every address, such a situation will always occur, regardless of whatever postcode system is implemented.

my3cents

Sam Russell wrote: »

How do you deliver a parcel to A67 XGET when you get to a group of houses in a rural townland, with identical houses spread about up side lanes and hidden behind hedges? If you do not have some kind of satnav, it is going to be impossible. You still need non-unique addresses, with house numbers and street names. Even white van drivers are human, and this system is not human friendly.

I do not think this Eircode is going to work any better than if it did not exist.

You seem to be suggesting that letters and parcels just arrive by magic in the Postmans sack or the white can drivers van.

Any delivery goes through a whole system so its up to the delivery companies to make the use they feel is best from the Eircode. They are putting routing information on the item anyway so the Eircode can be read checked and additional information added if necessary.

SpaceTime

When is this due to launch?

Sam Russell

Deleted User wrote: »

Well short of demanding that a (locally) unique visual identifier be placed at every address, such a situation will always occur, regardless of whatever postcode system is implemented.

How about a house number and a road name.

my3cents wrote: »

You seem to be suggesting that letters and parcels just arrive by magic in the Postmans sack or the white can drivers van.

Any delivery goes through a whole system so its up to the delivery companies to make the use they feel is best from the Eircode. They are putting routing information on the item anyway so the Eircode can be read checked and additional information added if necessary.

I think unique addresses humans can read is just as important as a post code.

If the codes had a smaller area for the routing code, and less random element, it might work better.

Deleted User

Deleted User wrote: »

Well short of demanding that a (locally) unique visual identifier be placed at every address, such a situation will always occur, regardless of whatever postcode system is implemented.

Sam Russell wrote: »

How about a house number and a road name.

That might work! But this IS Ireland! :pac:

Bray Head

Sam Russell wrote: »

How do you deliver a parcel to A67 XGET when you get to a group of houses in a rural townland, with identical houses spread about up side lanes and hidden behind hedges? If you do not have some kind of satnav, it is going to be impossible.

Why are you in the delivery business in 2014 if you do not have 'some kind of satnav'? It's like suggesting that a computer is inessential to someone in the publishing industry. This kind of argument is completely spurious.

I find 'some kind of satnav' (aka my iphone) extremely useful for the dozen times a year or so where I don't know my way to my destination. It will become more useful with eircodes. A delivery driver will face unknown destinations at least a dozen times a day. If he does not have a GPS-enabled computer-aided navigation device he will be out of business very soon.

Short of 50 years of technological progress being wiped out overnight eircode will be very useful to someone delivering things door to door.

ukoda

Bray Head wrote: »

Why are you in the delivery business in 2014 if you do not have 'some kind of satnav'? It's like suggesting that a computer is inessential to someone in the publishing industry. This kind of argument is completely spurious.

I find 'come kind of satnav' (aka my iphone) extremely useful for the dozen times a year or so where I don't know my way to my destination. It will become more useful with eircodes. A delivery driver will face unknown destinations at least a dozen times a day. If he does not have a GPS-enabled computer-aided navigation device he will be out of business very soon.

Short of 50 years of technological progress being wiped out overnight eircode will be very useful to someone delivering things door to door.

It's gonna be pretty handy for taxi drivers too, as most use their phones especially with how popular Hailo is

Sam Russell

Bray Head wrote: »

Why are you in the delivery business in 2014 if you do not have 'some kind of satnav'? It's like suggesting that a computer is inessential to someone in the publishing industry. This kind of argument is completely spurious.

I find 'come kind of satnav' (aka my iphone) extremely useful for the dozen times a year or so where I don't know my way to my destination. It will become more useful with eircodes. A delivery driver will face unknown destinations at least a dozen times a day. If he does not have a GPS-enabled computer-aided navigation device he will be out of business very soon.

Short of 50 years of technological progress being wiped out overnight eircode will be very useful to someone delivering things door to door.

It is not just delivery people that visit addresses. What we need is proper addresses first, post codes second.

If I am looking for 15 Boherbeg, I will know I am nearby if I find number 11, or a long way away if I find number 175. If I have the Eircode post code, I have no idea without the address of the place or a satnav.

my3cents

Sam Russell wrote: »

It is not just delivery people that visit addresses. What we need is proper addresses first, post codes second.

If I am looking for 15 Boherbeg, I will know I am nearby if I find number 11, or a long way away if I find number 175. If I have the Eircode post code, I have no idea without the address of the place or a satnav.

I don't think you realise quite how bad our address system is? You could have three No. 15's on the same street. You could have 11 next to 175 and whats worst of all many of the houses that are numbered won't be displaying the numbers. Same with house names, if I take ours and the 3 houses down the road all 4 have house names but only ours is displayed on the gate and our next door neighbor is in a different postal area to us with a different postman. We're all on the same road which also doesn't have a name. If I use my actual address my mail is at least a day late because it goes to the wrong postal area and if things go really bad (the county is missing of the address) there are at least another 4 townlands with the same name in the country so our mail can and occasionally has gone to all 4 of them before reaching us.

That said the address isn't being replaced by the Eircode the two work together and I think all addresses should include the townland and county because that gets you down to a fairly small area.

Sam Russell

my3cents wrote: »

I don't think you realise quite how bad our address system is? You could have three No. 15's on the same street. You could have 11 next to 175 and whats worst of all many of the houses that are numbered won't be displaying the numbers. Same with house names, if I take ours and the 3 houses down the road all 4 have house names but only ours is displayed on the gate and our next door neighbor is in a different postal area to us with a different postman. We're all on the same road which also doesn't have a name. If I use my actual address my mail is at least a day late because it goes to the wrong postal area and if things go really bad (the county is missing of the address) there are at least another 4 townlands with the same name in the country so our mail can and occasionally has gone to all 4 of them before reaching us.

That said the address isn't being replaced by the Eircode the two work together and I think all addresses should include the townland and county because that gets you down to a fairly small area.

So why is the address issue not tackled first?

An incomprehensible postcode like the Eircode one only compounds the issue. So, say, I agree to buy something on adverts.ie and go to collect it. Currently, it is a nightmare. With Eircode, it is still a nightmare. That is unless I have a small computer with a big database in my pocket. And what if the seller gets precious about giving out the Eircode?

Just because we have a bad address system does not justify bringing in an equally bad postcode system. Solve the address system first.

The Swiss postcode system is simple, and brilliant - because of that. And what is more - it is free.

I think that the eVoting system was considered brilliant prior to its use, then after its first use, which was a disaster (ask Nora Owens), the dept ordered thousands of the obsolete yokes to store at great expense until they were scrapped at even more expense.

ukoda

Sam Russell wrote: »

So why is the address issue not tackled first?

An incomprehensible postcode like the Eircode one only compounds the issue. So, say, I agree to buy something on adverts.ie and go to collect it. Currently, it is a nightmare. With Eircode, it is still a nightmare. That is unless I have a small computer with a big database in my pocket. And what if the seller gets precious about giving out the Eircode?

Just because we have a bad address system does not justify bringing in an equally bad postcode system. Solve the address system first.

The Swiss postcode system is simple, and brilliant - because of that. And what is more - it is free.

I think that the eVoting system was considered brilliant prior to its use, then after its first use, which was a disaster (ask Nora Owens), the dept ordered thousands of the obsolete yokes to store at great expense until they were scrapped at even more expense.

Use your phone, Google maps will be using eircodes. And why on earth would the seller NOT give you their eircode??? Don't be daft. They WANT you to find them. And if they only give thier address you can look up their eircode for free online as had been confirmed. Totally ridiculous argument.

And take a look back up this thread and you'll see its NOT a large database.

my3cents

Sam Russell wrote: »

So why is the address issue not tackled first.
....

The problem is who does it and how do they do it?

How do you enforce logical numbering on estates that are privately owned? How do you change someones address that they have been using for years? How do you decide on road names for the thousands of rural roads in every County that don't have names, do they have Irish names and English names? How do you deal with variations in spelling and addresses for Irish speaking areas. Do we change the spelling of all our addresses to conform to the road signs which all seem to use a different spelling. How do you make people put up numbers or names where they can be seen from the road. How do you deal with postal districts that split up roads so some houses have a postal address that is different from the actual address by townland? How do you heard cats?

Answer you don't, you let Eircode create a solution with a unique code for each household and put all the data in a database where all the locational and address information for that location is available.

Bray Head

Addressing is inconsistent and messy not only in rural areas but often in urban ones. I know a road where neighbours can't agree on the numbers. So there are two number 6s for example.

Assigning and re-assigning addresses across the country would be at an expense that would be an order of magnitude above eircodes. It would encounter mass popular revolt as people decide to keep the address they already like. It would create havoc with duplicates as some people change over and some people don't. And you would probably create something like a postcode anyway while you were at it!

The only way to solve the problem of non-unique addresses is with unique codes. No other system can possibly work in Ireland.

When they issue out these new postcodes, they can just send it in nameplate format and request that householders fix it to the gate/front door.
Sorted!

antoinolachtnai

Leonard Shelby wrote: »

I don't see how that poses an unsolvable problem for An Post. There are a number of ways for them to do this. Risk of reputation damage should be enough to concentrate their minds to ensure accuracy.

It is certainly a problem that can be solved. But at this point in time, there is apparently no plan for solving it. I think it will end up costing a lot of money.

Unfortunately the risk is a lot bigger than reputational damage.

plodder

Deleted User wrote: »

When they issue out these new postcodes, they can just send it in nameplate format and request that householders fix it to the gate/front door.
Sorted!

They should also send a phonetic pronunciation guide (seriously) for how to read the codes out over the phone. You don't want to be mixing up M6TV with N6DV when you're looking for an ambulance in the middle of the night.

I do think the addressing and basic delivery side of it is reasonable enough, though there are data protection concerns around the fact that an Eircode is a very convenient database key (like a PPS number) and it may end up getting used for purposes that people haven't fully thought through yet. And worse, its opponents may be able to whip up an Irish Water style controversy.

That's one of the reasons why I think a two level structure (within the proposed structure) might be safer. There might be a lot of useful applications where businesses/organisations would like to know where you live, but not exactly. People would be more willing to provide the first five characters of their Eircode because they know it wouldn't reveal exactly where they live and would allay some of the data protection concerns.

As it is now, the three character routing key is not much more useful than existing information such as Dublin postal districts.

ukoda

plodder wrote: »

They should also send a phonetic pronunciation guide (seriously) for how to read the codes out over the phone. You don't want to be mixing up M6TV with N6DV when you're looking for an ambulance in the middle of the night.

I do think the addressing and basic delivery side of it is reasonable enough, though there are data protection concerns around the fact that an Eircode is a very convenient database key (like a PPS number) and it may end up getting used for purposes that people haven't fully thought through yet. And worse, its opponents may be able to whip up an Irish Water style controversy.

That's one of the reasons why I think a two level structure (within the proposed structure) might be safer. There might be a lot of useful applications where businesses/organisations would like to know where you live, but not exactly. People would be more willing to provide the first five characters of their Eircode because they know it wouldn't reveal exactly where they live and would allay some of the data protection concerns.

As it is now, the three character routing key is not much more useful than existing information such as Dublin postal districts.

I can see the argument here but I don't think it's much of an issue.

People won't have much trouble giving out their eircodes as they will think of it as giving their address out, and in all the years I've been going about my life I've never actually thought "hold on, I better not give this company my address"

I recently renewed my car insurance and not one of the websites I visited would give me a quote without my full address, and a lot were using address validation in the background... Most notably 123.ie have the "check my address" button that's obviously doing a look up against the geo directory.

If you are in a scenario of wanting to give a general area then simply give the street name or townland or the suburb you live in

plodder

ukoda wrote: »

I can see the argument here but I don't think it's much of an issue.

People won't have much trouble giving out their eircodes as they will think of it as giving their address out, and in all the years I've been going about my life I've never actually thought "hold on, I better not give this company my address"

I recently renewed my car insurance and not one of the websites I visited would give me a quote without my full address, and a lot were using address validation in the background... Most notably 123.ie have the "check my address" button that's obviously doing a look up against the geo directory.

If you are in a scenario of wanting to give a general area then simply give the street name or townland or the suburb you live in

Data protection is all about expectation (of what the data you provide ends up being used for). So, for an insurance quote, it's perfectly reasonable that you would need to provide your full address/Eircode.

One example of what I'm thinking is market research. If they want to use Eircodes, then they are effectively asking people to provide their exact address, even though they might only want information at a courser level than that and having people's full address is a hassle (it's information that has to be protected) and it's also less likely that people will provide it in the first place for that reason. So, I think Eircodes will not be very useful for that sector, but they could have been.

ukoda

plodder wrote: »

Data protection is all about expectation (of what the data you provide ends up being used for). So, for an insurance quote, it's perfectly reasonable that you would need to provide your full address/Eircode.

One example of what I'm thinking is market research. If they want to use Eircodes, then they are effectively asking people to provide their exact address, even though they might only want information at a courser level than that and having people's full address is a hassle (it's information that has to be protected) and it's also less likely that people will provide it in the first place for that reason. So, I think Eircodes will not be very useful for that sector, but they could have been.

It depends on what kind of marketing we are taking about, if it's a company you have an account with then they will have your address and eircode and will be able to use it to the degree you specified it to be used to contact you. They will also be able to make use of it in the background for segmentation and campaign planning, so it will be very useful to marketing people

In terms of the "vague" marketing people who only want to know the general area (I.e. Researchers) then they can still ask people where they generally live to a town or townland level so they have lost nothing. They aren't much interested in the geographical aspects to any level that would require any sort of granular postcode. What most do is pick towns and conduct pockets of research in them and collate the data based on a split between towns (usually a mix of rural/urban and large small). If they want to do a phone survey they aren't interested in any detailed addresses really, they simply ask for cross sections based on multiple factors, general area being only one small part, that again, can be based on the town or townland. So I don't really see what's lost here at all

plodder

It's true nobody loses anything with Eircodes. It's a question of what if any new opportunities it creates.

Another area of concern relates to the mismatch between what an Irish postcode is, and what postcodes in other countries are. In most places, they are anonymous. So, they can be shared more freely than Eircodes should be. What if corporations like Amazon or Ebay were to share anonymised data about their customers preferences using postcodes? The problem would be that the data from this country wouldn't be anonymous and they would need to know that the routing key is the only anonymous portion of the code. Maybe that is granular enough for some purposes, but if we wanted to have an anonymous identifier that is equivalent to say the UK postcode, then we'd structure it so that only the last one or two characters are random.

And that's before you get into the whole issue of what type of postcode people actually would like, if they were asked

ukoda

plodder wrote: »

It's true nobody loses anything with Eircodes. It's a question of what if any new opportunities it creates.

Another area of concern relates to the mismatch between what an Irish postcode is, and what postcodes in other countries are. In most places, they are anonymous. So, they can be shared more freely than Eircodes should be. What if corporations like Amazon or Ebay were to share anonymised data about their customers preferences using postcodes? The problem would be that the data from this country wouldn't be anonymous and they would need to know that the routing key is the only anonymous portion of the code. Maybe that is granular enough for some purposes, but if we wanted to have an anonymous identifier that is equivalent to say the UK postcode, then we'd structure it so that only the last one or two characters are random.

And that's before you get into the whole issue of what type of postcode people actually would like, if they were asked

Well you see it's an all or nothing with these companies usually. So you either tick the box "I'll allow Amazon share my details with 3rd parties" or you don't. If you do, then expect everything Amazon knows about you to be shared, including phone number, email, full address and your shopping preferences

plodder

ukoda wrote: »

Well you see it's an all or nothing with these companies usually. So you either tick the box "I'll allow Amazon share my details with 3rd parties" or you don't. If you do, then expect everything Amazon knows about you to be shared, including phone number, email, full address and your shopping preferences

Right, but what if you say "No" do they still expect to use aggregate information based on postcodes? Eg X number of people from this postcode were interested in this product. Hopefully, they know they can't do this with Eircodes.

Carawaystick

my3cents wrote: »

I think all addresses should include the townland and county because that gets you down to a fairly small area.

Townland is pretty pointless in any town though. I'd also reckon there are counties with several of the same townlands.

ukoda

plodder wrote: »

Right, but what if you say "No" do they still expect to use aggregate information based on postcodes? Eg X number of people from this postcode were interested in this product. Hopefully, they know they can't do this with Eircodes.

theres a difference tho between them (i.e. the company you gave the eircode to) using your eircode to aggregate in the background and i fully expect they will, and i don't have an issue with them doing it as they are doing it now with the address data and my previous purchases. but if i say No to 3rd parties having my details, Amazon et al are not allowed then transfer my eircode (or UK postcode) as they have it as part of my account data and I've said no, so my postcode, either an eircode or a UK postcode is NOT put on any list to be sold on. so when they pull their report to collect data to sell on, my account (and thus my eircode) is on an exclusion list

my3cents

Carawaystick wrote: »

Townland is pretty pointless in any town though. I'd also reckon there are counties with several of the same townlands.

I could have explained further and agree, but in towns you have road names which in rural area you normally don't have so there's another Irish problem, we don't have a standard format for addresses.

I can't think of any townland name that is duplicated in the same county but I wouldn't be surprised if it was another problem, there are I know hundreds of duplicates country wide.

plodder

my3cents wrote: »

I could have explained further and agree, but in towns you have road names which in rural area you normally don't have so there's another Irish problem, we don't have a standard format for addresses.

I can't think of any townland name that is duplicated in the same county but I wouldn't be surprised if it was another problem, there are I know hundreds of duplicates country wide.

Oh, there are plenty of instances of that. I had an experience with Eircom when they installed my phone line, and they took my address over the phone - lets say Ballybackwards, Forwardstown, Co. Meath. It's seems my address didn't exist in their database. So, the operator looked for any other Ballybackwards in the same County and they just put that one in, without even saying anything. Of course the engineer turns up to install the line at the wrong Ballybackwards, 40km away.

Any postcode should fix that problem, though ironically perhaps not in the case of new houses being built, if the databases are only updated four times a year.