National Postcodes to be introduced

irishgeo

SpaceTime wrote: »

I'd prefer something with more ability to pick out small areas, but anything would be better than the chaos we have at the moment.

Is there any rollout date on this system?

Spring 2015 is when the letters are sent out stating your own eircode.

my3cents

irishgeo wrote: »

Spring 2015 is when the letters are sent out stating your own eircode.

I'm not against Eircode but is there a reason of them screwing up and being 12 months late?

Bray Head

I've learned a lot about obscure technical standards over the last few days.

I have never been remotely confused by dial tones differing by country.

I have, by contrast, spent more time than I would like trying to find places in Ireland on the back of cryptic addresses. I am glad that this will be over from some point later this year.

I cannot for the life of me see why people are objecting to a system that is technology-dependent. Multiple things in your daily life (like making a phone call) depend on computerised look-ups.

If other countries were designing their postcode systems today they would assign every address a unique, unambiguous code (whether hierarchical or not). To fail to do that would be to ignore the massive technological leaps over the last 50 years in this regard.

Bray Head

my3cents wrote: »

I'm not against Eircode but is there a reason of them screwing up and being 12 months late?

This is pure speculation on my part. But you are designing and distributing a system that may well need to last a century it's worth taking a little bit of time to make sure that it's done right at the beginning. Screw-ups at this point could have very persistent effects.

ukoda

my3cents wrote: »

I'm not against Eircode but is there a reason of them screwing up and being 12 months late?

Didn't they always say spring 2015??

Bray Head

SpaceTime wrote: »

I'd prefer something with more ability to pick out small areas, but anything would be better than the chaos we have at the moment.

I wouldn't object to small areas being embedded in eircodes. But I see a few problems and not many advantages.

Small areas are sufficiently small and homogenous that using them would not give rise to postcode ghetto effects to a great extent. The problem is that they are so small (pop 270 on average I believe) and there are lots of them. I would contend that no delivery person will remember them if the small area part of the code is assigned randomly, so they won't aid manual sorting.

Unless of course you begin to aggregate them in another layer of the code. And then you are immediately into postcode ghetto territory. As I've said before the biggest risk to eircode is people simply not using them and anything that makes people think their house is less valuable or would deter employers may put people off.

The one advantage is that it would allow you to give a partial postcode for privacy reasons. As I've said before this level of functionality would be used by a tiny fraction of users. If there are data protection concerns in this regard you could simply require market researchers or the like to only store a person's small area code in a database. I am not a coder but I guess this is fairly easy to write.

my3cents

ukoda wrote: »

Didn't they always say spring 2015??

Yep, my bad, I'm still thinking its 2014, not that even makes much sense, but in my head a took spring 2015 to be next year. Thank god we don't write cheques any more I always used to write a couple each year with the previous years date on them

LeinsterDub

Bray Head wrote: »

This is pure speculation on my part. But you are designing and distributing a system that may well need to last a century it's worth taking a little bit of time to make sure that it's done right at the beginning. Screw-ups at this point could have very persistent effects.

A little bit of time or 10 years

SpaceTime

I don't get the notion of it being a ghetto!
At that rate just get rid of addresses entirely in case being in the wrong suburb or town offends people.

Just collect your post and parcels at some regional depot as identifying suburbs or streets or in any way clustering homes might cause people to freak out.

To me we're looking for daft reasons that the system won't work.

ukoda

SpaceTime wrote: »

I don't get the notion of it being a ghetto!
At that rate just get rid of addresses entirely in case being in the wrong suburb or town offends people.

Just collect your post and parcels at some regional depot as identifying suburbs or streets or in any way clustering homes might cause people to freak out.

To me we're looking for daft reasons that the system won't work.

They are daft. But they are real reasons a system that groups houses will be negatively received. They are also the same reasons that D6W exists

Sam Russell

Surely the same ideas apply to land line phone numbers.

No one appears to be bothered, but I suppose a lot of people have gone to mobile numbers which completely randomises their location.

SpaceTime

True hardly anyone uses landlines as their primary point of contact anymore.

Frankly, I'd be surprised if they even exist in their current form in a decade. A lot of people don't even know their landline number and got it bundled with a broadband service that they actually wanted.

Impetus

Sam Russell wrote: »

I hope they have allowed for a larger field than just 7 characters. They may need it for the redesign in 2017.

Hopefully they will use a shorter rather than longer field - eg 4 or 5 characters.
Germany did with 4 characters until re-unification. France, Spain, Italy, etc have 5. Most countires in or around Ireland's population have four characters - eg Switzerland, Denmark, Norway, Austria, Luxembourg, Cyprus, Belgium, etc.

This does not stop companies and gov agencies from using a standardised (say 10 digit) property ID number, automatically looked up once one enters the 4 digit postocde and the first few characters of the street/road. The 10 digit number is hidden. Every big company could give each property a unique ID - but it is probably better to standardize the unique ID. That does not imply publication and public use. Just like a payment card number. It is unique to the cardholder, worldwide. But you supply it on a need to know basis to pay for your purchases. It does not appear on your delivery address or any other publicly available document.

But publishing (and maintaining) and forcing the use of unique codes for every house is an expensive, difficult to administer, fraud inviting, mortal sin of data protection. And it does nothing to help some delivery agent or visitor to find your house or place of business. And there is no provision in the eircode for large users of the post, po boxes, or sorting mail to company departments.

Impetus

A few videos of automated postal sorting/processing/delivery:

La Poste sorting centres in France – each one covers several departments. 5 digit postcodes – one machine can sort 14 envelopes a second (50,000 per hour). It only takes three sorting cycles to sort to the delivery postman’s walk order. Envelopes that can’t be auto read are scanned for human intervention while the envelope is still in the mechanised system (as is the case in Ireland). Most French sorting factories are next to airports and / or TGV railway stations. The French system can automatically re-direct post where the addressee has moved – a new address label is applied to the item in the sorting process. Colour coded dividers are automatically inserted to separate PO pox and large company mail (CEDEX) from street delivery items.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1eVJhcH1rQ

Compare and contrast with the British system which is based on 30 year old technology. While this sorting centre is near Gatwick airport, the mail has to go to Stansted airport 100 km away along the M50 to be shipped by air, on top of 3 hours driving in a van across London from the letterbox to the sorting centre. The working conditions look grimy compared with the continental counterpart facilities.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BVHPmGIxBQ
Express post, red handed….


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vd1oJjl_XFI

Automated parcel sorting in bPost (Belgium’s postal service). Two sorting centres cover the entire country of 11 million people with four languages, if one includes English.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vN9XRIAys38

ukoda

Impetus wrote: »

Hopefully they will use a shorter rather than longer field - eg 4 or 5 characters.

You realise the design has been signed off? It's a 7 digit alphanumeric code. It's not going to be anything else.

Sam Russell

I think a numeric code of 5 characters will give areas equivalent to 200 addresses or so. That would meet all requirements of a post code and for a satnav to locate an address. It would also allow the impromptu use of codes for meeting points.

Using the format of phone numbers would make it reasonably easy for people to remember many codes, other than just their own.

Sam Russell

ukoda wrote: »

You realise the design has been signed off? It's a 7 digit alphanumeric code. It's not going to be anything else.

Until the redesign.

Impetus

ukoda wrote: »

You realise the design has been signed off? It's a 7 digit alphanumeric code. It's not going to be anything else.

Wait and see. A number of freedom of information requests are in train against the department in question. Legal / media attention regarding the mess may well follow.

ukoda

Sam Russell wrote: »

I think a numeric code of 5 characters will give areas equivalent to 200 addresses or so. That would meet all requirements of a post code and for a satnav to locate an address. It would also allow the impromptu use of codes for meeting points.

Using the format of phone numbers would make it reasonably easy for people to remember many codes, other than just their own.

That's all well and good. But again, that's not what we are getting. This will never be Ireland's postcode system. But in the interest of keeping the repeated points going over and over again let's discuss this some more shall we

ukoda

Sam Russell wrote: »

Until the redesign.

You're very sure of yourself. What are you basing that on? Nothing?

ukoda

Impetus wrote: »

Wait and see. A number of freedom of information requests are in train against the department in question. Legal / media attention regarding the mess may well follow.

How will a freedom of information request lead to a redesign. And bare in mind these requests can be denied with reason.

Impetus

Ireland (and GB in most cases) has a severe problem with standards and systems.


The majority of the planet uses a 4 to 6 digit postcode before the town name, on the same line to aid machine recognition and avoid sorting errors. These include most of Europe, virtually all of Latin America, Russia, China, many African countries, etc.


The same countries generally use the same ITU-T telephone ringing tone.


They also drive on the right (which is natural – most people are right handed, and it is dysfunctional to expect right handed people to operate controls in the centre console with their left hand). Almost as bad as driving and texting or driving and using a mobile phone for voice or internet.


And the same countries comply with Geneva Convention road signage.
Zooming in on postcodes – GB uses a different barcode system to the rest of the world.



The barcode on an envelope posted in Ireland and much of the rest of the world is an ID number for the package. It is scanned once, and the address is stored in a datebase, and the destination is available electronically to every other postal delivery company using the origin country barcode serial number as the point of reference.



Eg you post a letter is Naas for delivery to an address on the Continent. The letter is taken to a sorting factory in Portlaoise and the address is machine scanned, and it is barcoded with a number. That letter moves through the system within Ireland and on the continent using the same barcode.



The postal sorting system on the continent detects a letter with an Irish imprinted barcode and does a database search for the delivery address from the An Post system. This enquiry shows that for example it is addressed to an entity based at Willy-Brandt-Allee 14, 53113 Bonn. When Deutsche Post receive a tray of mail from An Post, they can bypass the envelope address recognition process, because An Post have already done it.



They just read the barcode, make a database enquiry and the system knows the lat / long of the recipient. Allowing the sorting algo to sort the letters as required (eg in house number order along a road/street). There is no need for Deutsche Post to waste time re-scanning the addresses. Ie the mail can be treated as mail posted in another German city. So it gets delivered faster etc.


If you post a letter to GB, the system there does not use the international standard. Their barcodes are based on postcodes. As a result a letter has to go through the address recognition process again. And if there is a badly formed character or typo in the British postcode, chances are the item will be delayed. In the Irish/international system, all typos are fixed first. Ie if the full address on the envelope does not match with a valid address, there are human beings sitting at VDUs who look at the envelope and decide the destination.


The same intelligent modus operandi can apply to big data, CSO, banks whoever. Assuming IRL had five digit postcodes and you were shopping online, you would first be asked to enter your postcode, and then the street address, and same as Google can predict your search keywords after you have typed a few characters, the website can predict your full address after you have just entered about 7 or 8 characters. Not W3 J3QZ type stuff but 1004 MO… if you live in Morehampton Road. If there are two roads in 1004 beginning with MO you get a dropdown list. It is a matter of making it user-friendly. And if you live at 23 Morehampton Road, and some company or gov organization is willing to pay for the database, they can determine that 23 Morehampton Rd has a unique ID number 1004200300, or whatever it is. And from a logistics point of view the database can show the location of your house as being 53.325137, -6.241125 or whatever it is. All with a simple 1004 postcode for Dublin 4 or 9002 for an address in Galway city etc.


Eircode is half-copying a postcode system developed in another country nearly 40 years ago. A time when computing power was expensive and there were no PCs or internet.

Impetus

ukoda wrote: »

How will a freedom of information request lead to a redesign. And bare in mind these requests can be denied with reason.

One suspects that there will be legal action and/or media coverage on the mess/corruption/stupidity involved.

ukoda

Impetus wrote: »

One suspects that there will be legal action and/or media coverage on the mess/corruption/stupidity involved.

I doubt this will happen. And even if it does I would still doubt the system would be redesigned

Impetus

Politics.ie has 195 page of discussion on the Eircode. Ireland's postcode system once implemented will have long lasting impact - ie it is unlikely to be changed for many years. Napoleon brought in house numbering in France. Using blue ceramic tiles with white numbers, back in the day. As a result it is very simple to find a house on a French urban street/road.

France also uses metric house numbering in suburban / rural areas. eg 1200 route d'Antibes is 200 metres away from 1000 route d'Antibes. Bog simple if you are walking/driving down a road looking for an address. Long lasting, simple. Minimalist. Why do ejits feel the urge to make things complicated? Because they are idiots.

The randomization of the Eircode will be intellectually inviting for hackers. Break the randomization algo and publish a list of postcodes in street order on the web.


http://www.politics.ie/forum/current-affairs/147187-15m-spent-postcodes-195.html

Impetus

ukoda wrote: »

I doubt this will happen. And even if it does I would still doubt the system would be redesigned

There may well be no Eircode, no postcode, and IRL remains in the 18th century in terms of logistics etc

ukoda

Impetus wrote: »

The randomization of the Eircode will be intellectually inviting for hackers. Break the randomization algo and publish a list of postcodes in street order on the web

Everyone's address is already available as a public record on the web. Have you heard of Google maps or a sat nav?

And If publishing everyone's address in street order is so attractive why had no one hacked the geo directory?

Because what you claim is pure rubbish to be honest.

yuloni

This post has been deleted.

SpaceTime

Impetus wrote: »

They also drive on the right (which is natural – most people are right handed, and it is dysfunctional to expect right handed people to operate controls in the centre console with their left hand). Almost as bad as driving and texting or driving and using a mobile phone for voice or internet.

While I'd hate to spoil a good rant about Ireland: think about the above for a moment!

If you are driving an Irish, British, Japanese, Australian etc car the steering wheel is on the right of the vehicle. You will generally steer mostly with your right hand and use your left hand to change gears, operate controls, the radio and so on.

On a continental or US left-hand-drive car, you're mostly steering with your *left* hand and operating the gears, radio and so on with your right hand (dominant for most people).

So, in reality our system actually makes more use of most people's dominant hand for the all important task of steering. Changing gears requires far less dexterity, unless you're driving some kind of ancient car with a very poor gearbox.

There are a lot of legacy issues here where systems developed in isolation and in parallel before there was any notion of any need for harmonisation with Europe.

I'm sure the Eircode system *must* be capable of being used with Universal Postal Union systems. The British, Canadian, Australian and the US Zip+4 system are, as are many others that don't follow a continental European generic format.

Given that it's a unique identifier, all foreign postal services would need to do is convert 1 line of alphanumeric characters into a barcode. Given how rapidly modern OCR scanners can read one line of chars, it wouldn't even necessarily make sense to even go to that trouble as An Post could do it pretty much as rapidly as they can read barcodes!

plodder

Bray Head wrote: »

I wouldn't object to small areas being embedded in eircodes. But I see a few problems and not many advantages.

Small areas are sufficiently small and homogenous that using them would not give rise to postcode ghetto effects to a great extent. The problem is that they are so small (pop 270 on average I believe) and there are lots of them. I would contend that no delivery person will remember them if the small area part of the code is assigned randomly, so they won't aid manual sorting.

Unless of course you begin to aggregate them in another layer of the code.

They wouldn't have to be assigned randomly or aggregated into larger units. They could be assigned automatically in some way so that neighbouring areas have similar codes. So, if one area has the code D3, then the area to the West of it, would have D2, and the area to the East would have D4. The area to the South would have E3. Small areas aren't regular shapes obviously, but some algorithm could be devised to allocate them in that general kind of way.

And then you are immediately into postcode ghetto territory. As I've said before the biggest risk to eircode is people simply not using them and anything that makes people think their house is less valuable or would deter employers may put people off.

The one advantage is that it would allow you to give a partial postcode for privacy reasons. As I've said before this level of functionality would be used by a tiny fraction of users. If there are data protection concerns in this regard you could simply require market researchers or the like to only store a person's small area code in a database. I am not a coder but I guess this is fairly easy to write.

But, there is a big difference between (a) asking a data controller to throw away the full address you gave them (through your Eircode) and replacing it with a small area code, and (b) with not giving them your full Eircode in the first place. The latter provides a much higher guarantee of privacy.

Incidentally, I came across a discussion on another site about Irish language statistics and how the picture of Irish speaking clusters looks so different when analysed by small-areas, as opposed to Electoral divisions, which is the way it was done up to 2011. Obviously that analysis can happen with or without Eircodes, but my point is that awareness of small areas is going to increase - they are only a few years old at this stage. Much more thought should have gone into the question of whether they should be reflected in our postcode and it's not too late to do that, within the structure already announced. People will be asking in years to come, why this wasn't done.