National Postcodes to be introduced

antoinolachtnai

oscarBravo wrote: »

Numbering things is trivial.

I thought from your last post that it was a big deal for you?

Telling Irish people that their address is no longer "Liscarney, Co Mayo" but instead is a street number on a road number within a small area number in County Mayo - no matter what ingenious numbering scheme you devise for those small areas - isn't. going. to happen.

This seems like a problem that will happen no matter what sort of postcode you add.

In Denmark, every house has a street number on a road name. Also in Denmark, if you don't have the name of every recipient of post clearly printed on the mailbox, the mail won't be delivered. If the postcode is on the wrong line on the envelope, the mail won't be delivered.

That is very interesting.

Danish people, being Danish people, cheerfully comply with the requirements placed upon them by their government.

That is an interesting generalisation about people in Denmark.

Irish people take to the streets at the very idea of paying for water. So use your own words. Explain to us - in detail - how it will be possible to change at least a third of the postal addresses in the country without any friction from the good people of the country.

It would be better if you actually read the thread before commenting on it. I have explained this ad nauseam before and I hate to burden people who actually read the thread with hearing it all again.

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=74286230&postcount=710

But to save you from reading back, just put an 8- or 9- digit postcode at the end of the address.

Each of the digits of the code represents a successive tier of structure.

The code's digits represent:
the province (first digit),
county (second digit),
small area (third, forth and fifth digit)
street segment within the small area (sixth digit)
and a building number (seventh and eight digits, which in rural areas might be calculated by measuring the distance from the entrance to the property to the beginning of the road segment in meters and then dividing that figure by 10)

You could add an extra digit somewhere to allow extra flexibility for the future. This is really a detailed design question.

Customers could use the 5-digit version or choose to use the 8- or 9-digit extended version. It would be up to them.

ukoda

People use their postcode to be found. Not to hide.

oscarBravo

antoinolachtnai wrote: »

I thought from your last post that it was a big deal for you?

Then you're not paying attention. Numbering is trivial; getting people to accept that they have to have a street number is hard.

This seems like a problem that will happen no matter what sort of postcode you add.

No. Adding a postcode to an existing address is (relatively) easy. Changing existing addresses is hard.

That is an interesting generalisation about people in Denmark.

I spend a fair bit of time in Denmark, and I live with a Danish person. I'm relatively qualified to comment on Danish people. I'm also pointing out a truism: that's how postal delivery works in Denmark, and it wouldn't work here, which means that Danish people have a different temperament in these matters than we do.

If you think I'm being unfair to the Danes, feel free to explain why.

It would be better if you actually read the thread before commenting on it. I have explained this ad nauseam before and I hate to burden people who actually read the thread with hearing it all again.

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=74286230&postcount=710

But to save you from reading back, just put an 8- or 9- digit postcode at the end of the address.

Each of the digits of the code represents a successive tier of structure.

The code's digits represent:
the province (first digit),
county (second digit),
small area (third, forth and fifth digit)
street segment within the small area (sixth digit)
and a building number (seventh and eight digits, which in rural areas might be calculated by measuring the distance from the entrance to the property to the beginning of the road segment in meters and then dividing that figure by 10)

You could add an extra digit somewhere to allow extra flexibility for the future. This is really a detailed design question.

So, basically, when I talked about not having unique postcodes but instead having unique addresses, you argued with me; but when pressed on it, your actual solution is to keep non-unique addresses but to add unique postcodes to them. Just not these postcodes.

Look: I pointed out that any putative privacy issues with eircodes stems from the fact that they are, of necessity, unique in a country with non-unique addresses. You argued with this, which led me to believe you were arguing that we don't need unique postal codes. It turns out you agree that we need unique postal codes, as long as they're your unique codes rather than someone else's.

Again: I accept that there are arguments why this system isn't perfect. What others seem unable to accept is that there are no perfect systems, and that, had their pet system been adopted, other people would have been as unhappy as they are now. I can live with an imperfect system, as long as we get a goddamn system that I can actually use sometime within the lifetime of my business, and I see no reason to believe that this system won't work. I see people claiming it won't work, but I can't see a compelling argument for those claims other than "I would have done it differently".

Back to the current argument: yes, the code as you describe it would probably have worked. It would have had arguments against it, and I'd probably be having this discussion with its detractors instead of with you. Whatever. When I started having the argument, it was against the idea that we should have changed everyone's address instead of having unique postal codes, which I still think is a stupid and naive idea, until we as a nation get better at doing what we're told.

a65b2cd

antoinolachtnai wrote: »

It is the smallest administrative division in Ireland, currently used for statistical purposes.

I thought small areas were just for statistical usage but had no legal or administrative basis? Have they been written into legislation? Who has authority for maintaining them? My fear is that they will change from census to census and hence are not sufficiently stable to be used as an element of a postcode unless of course you want an unstable postcode.

antoinolachtnai

So, basically, when I talked about not having unique postcodes but instead having unique addresses, you argued with me; but when pressed on it, your actual solution is to keep non-unique addresses but to add unique postcodes to them. Just not these postcodes.

No. What you stated was that there was no workable alternative to eircode. You mocked the words of another poster. http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=94695568&postcount=4578

The words you used were:

Because the alternative was to opt for one that couldn't be implemented.

But there is a workable alternative to eircode (something you now accept).

Look: I pointed out that any putative privacy issues with eircodes stems from the fact that they are, of necessity, unique in a country with non-unique addresses.

That is not true. It's a pity you didn't read back through the thread before posting.

You argued with this, which led me to believe you were arguing that we don't need unique postal codes.

It's a pity you didn't read back through the thread before posting.

It turns out you agree that we need unique postal codes, as long as they're your unique codes rather than someone else's.

That is an unwarranted, insulting and untrue attack on me.

It's a pity you didn't read back through the thread before posting.

oscarBravo

antoinolachtnai wrote: »

No. What you stated was that there was no workable alternative to eircode.

No, I didn't state that.

If you're going to be prissily pedantic, start by not claiming I said something I didn't say.

Here's a clue: when I've made it clear that I believe that other codes than eircode could have worked, then claiming that I've stated that there was no workable alternative to eircode is a self-evidently stupid thing to say, particularly when I didn't say it.

If your instinct is to try to tell me what I meant, think twice. I tend not to say things I don't mean, so if you think I've contradicted myself in two consecutive posts, you're going to have to consider the possibility that you haven't understood what I said.

antoinolachtnai

oscarBravo wrote: »

No, I didn't state that.

You did, in post #4578. Then you changed your mind in #4594.

If you're going to be prissily pedantic, start by not claiming I said something I didn't say.

I hope you are done with the personal insults now.

plodder

GJG wrote: »

Well, that may be your question, and fair enough, but many catastrophic scenarios are predicted here simply if it is possible to ever uniquely identify somebody's home. They don't address the blindingly obvious point that 60 per cent of addresses in RoI are already unique, and 100 per cent of addresses in NI are both unique and machine-readably unique, and their doomsday scenarios, supposedly dependent on only being able to uniquely identify a house, haven't happened there yet.

Fair enough. As it happens I don't agree with all of the criticism of Eircode here anyway.

I think the point is clear now that there are potential privacy issues and it may just come down to weighing up whether the benefit of solving the unique address problem is worth whatever the risks may be. I agree also that a more hierarchical code within the proposed structure might mitigate that risk to some degree.

plodder

a65b2cd wrote: »

I thought small areas were just for statistical usage but had no legal or administrative basis?

True but why is that a problem? If someone accepts a random code why reject a structured one? Can you not just ignore the structure? Does it really matter how the structure is created since it's not needed for delivering post.

Have they been written into legislation? Who has authority for maintaining them?

Fair question.

My fear is that they will change from census to census and hence are not sufficiently stable to be used as an element of a postcode unless of course you want an unstable postcode.

I dealt with this question some pages back. The reality is that small areas should be stable. In the majority of cases where new houses get built it should be possible to create new small areas without affecting any existing codes.

oscarBravo

antoinolachtnai wrote: »

You did, in post #4578.

No, I didn't.

I can see I'm dealing with someone who would rather call someone else a liar than admit that they might have misunderstood what they said.

ukoda

oscarBravo wrote: »

What others seem unable to accept is that there are no perfect systems, and that, had their pet system been adopted, other people would have been as unhappy as they are now.

this is exactly why theres so much arguing on this thread, everyone thinks they have a better way of doing it, no matter what way its done people will have issues with it, but some have such blind hatred of eircode that they refuse to see the good its going to do and all the benefits it will bring

antoinolachtnai

a65b2cd wrote: »

I thought small areas were just for statistical usage but had no legal or administrative basis?

They certainly have an administrative basis. They are developed and used by two state agencies, the CSO and OSi. They nest into electoral divisions, the smallest legally defined areas. They could be put on a legal footing easily enough.

The basis of post towns is much fuzzier.

Have they been written into legislation? Who has authority for maintaining them?

OSi and CSO have responsibility for maintaining them.

My fear is that they will change from census to census and hence are not sufficiently stable to be used as an element of a postcode unless of course you want an unstable postcode.

They would certainly need to be put on a firm footing.

Much the same issues arise in relation to post town areas which are the basis of the first three characters of eircode. Post town areas may not even be geographically contiguous.

An alternative would be to use electoral divisions and at a later stage road/street segment numbering.

recedite

oscarBravo wrote: »

Numbering is trivial; getting people to accept that they have to have a street number is hard.
Adding a postcode to an existing address is (relatively) easy. Changing existing addresses is hard.

Can't see a whole lot of difference myself. One number is at the start of the address, and one is at the end. If you are going to have the longer number at the end, it may as well be a location code and not just a random PPS number.

oscarBravo wrote: »

When I started having the argument, it was against the idea that we should have changed everyone's address instead of having unique postal codes, which I still think is a stupid and naive idea, until we as a nation get better at doing what we're told.

An Post regularly writes to people telling them their address has changed.
Even in Dublin where the postal districts are in use, people get told to use one townland area name instead of another, which irritates them, but they do it anyway because they want to receive their post.
Why do An Post do it? Because, they might want to move the sorting office, and the High Court says they can.
So it's not that big a deal.

oscarBravo

recedite wrote: »

Can't see a whole lot of difference myself. One number is at the start of the address, and one is at the end.

Yes. That's the only difference between a street number and a postal code.

Jesus wept.

thierry14

oscarBravo wrote: »

Yes. That's the only difference between a street number and a postal code.

Jesus wept.

They should just send out a random post code number attached with lat and long

Which is kind of what they are doing

You will need technology to use it, but that's the world we live in.

SpaceTime

It looks to me more like the Canada Post system on the surface of it - where the alphanumerical codes don't really correspond to any particular town name / county / province name. It's not a particularly friendly system.

Although, it does define a house, where as the Canadian system just gives you a rough idea of where something is as they've only 830,000 codes for the entire area that covers Canada!

In general, I just don't like Eircode. It's an horrible compromise between various messes that nobody has the ability or brassneck will deal with at a political level. We need human-readable, logical addressing.

Database lookup codes (Eircode) and even GPS coordinate systems like Loc8 are not really solving what is a much more fundamental problem.
We're coming up with technological fixes for 100 years of administrative chaos really.

It's a bit like having a whole load of library books in a heap and instead of sorting them into alphabetical order, you opt to put an RFID tag on every one of them and find them using a RFID scanning gun because you're terrified politics and strictures imposed by the alphabet.

Someone please think of the NIMBYs !!

thierry14

ukoda wrote: »

People use their postcode to be found. Not to hide.

Has there been any announcement on how much they are going to charge business to use the post codes?

Say you have 5000 customers and need erode translated to lat and long.

I'm sure there will be some batch apps setup for converting eircodes to lat and long in time.

Like below for street addresses

http://www.findlatitudeandlongitude.com/batch-geocode/#.VQbOMiM4nqA

ukoda

thierry14 wrote: »

Has there been any announcement on how much they are going to charge business to use the post codes?

Say you have 5000 customers and need erode translated to lat and long.

I'm sure there will be some batch apps setup for converting eircodes to lat and long in time.

Like below for street addresses

http://www.findlatitudeandlongitude.com/batch-geocode/#.VQbOMiM4nqA

thats the plan from them anyway, you can pretty much query the database in whatever way you want

recedite

thierry14 wrote: »

I'm sure there will be some batch apps setup for converting eircodes to lat and long in time.

Like below for street addresses

http://www.findlatitudeandlongitude.com/batch-geocode/#.VQbOMiM4nqA

This app seems to be converting Google addresses into lat/longitude, for free.
If Google pay for access to the eircode database, can they then superimpose all the eircodes onto google maps, for public access, as they have done with most addresses?
An interesting question, and one for the corporate lawyers. But I have a feeling Googles lawyers are going to be better than eircode's lawyers.
Once the geo location of the eircodes is "out there" it will be very difficult to control the dispersal of that data. Eircodes proposed "pay for access" database model could prove to be short lived.
Not a problem for them though, they will just look for an ongoing State subvention towards maintaining the database.

ukoda

recedite wrote: »

This app seems to be converting Google addresses into lat/longitude, for free.
If Google pay for access to the eircode database, can they then superimpose all the eircodes onto google maps, for public access, as they have done with most addresses?
An interesting question, and one for the corporate lawyers. But I have a feeling Googles lawyers are going to be better than eircode's lawyers.
Once the geo location of the eircodes is "out there" it will be very difficult to control the dispersal of that data. Eircodes proposed "pay for access" database model could prove to be short lived.
Not a problem for them though, they will just look for an ongoing State subvention towards maintaining the database.

Well hold on a second, it's likely Google will pay for the ericode database and superimpose it on their maps so people can look up and navigate, this by no means erodes any revenue streams that eircode might have from businesses who want to do things like validate addresses on their systems, lookup addresses and aliases and any other queries they might have, businesses aren't likely to purchase eircode database for getting the lat/Lon coordinates, it's much more likely they want it for other reasons

Edit: the geo directory is a pay for use product that makes money, yet nearly every address in it is on Google maps for free and can use that app to get lat/long

recedite

If the address with corresponding eircode can be found on Google maps, that pretty much validates it.
I'd imagine the most common use for eircodes/geodirectory would be finding the address, and organising batch deliveries with minimal travel.

So if this can be done for free using the data indirectly via Google, a lot of people won't want to pay.

Yes, Geodirectory was set up as "pay to use", but it's only recently that most addresses have appeared on Google. Arguably, the main use for the Geodirectory business model has already been circumvented, so they are lucky eircode came along, bringing along the unlimited funding of the exchequer.

ukoda

recedite wrote: »

If the address with corresponding eircode can be found on Google maps, that pretty much validates it.
I'd imagine the most common use for eircodes/geodirectory would be finding the address, and organising batch deliveries with minimal travel.

So if this can be done for free using the data indirectly via Google, a lot of people won't want to pay.

Yes, Geodirectory was set up as "pay to use", but it's only recently that most addresses have appeared on Google. Arguably, the main use for the Geodirectory business model has already been circumvented, so they are lucky eircode came along, bringing along the unlimited funding of the exchequer.

When I say validation, I mean an api on their website that talks to the eircode database to return a full address when an eircode is entered and also to validate it is a correct ericode, they need the eircode database to do this, also a lot of companies will want it for fraud prevention as it has alias addresses in it so they can know 2 addresses are the same place.

Call centres will want it so their staff don't have to waste time trying to find ballysomewhere (can you spell that for me?) etc etc.

Having it on google won't really affect the need to purchase the eircode database too much I reckon

recedite

Any of that could be done on an external website similar to the batch geocode app that thierry14 linked to. In addition to putting in the address in one box and seeing the co-ordinates pop up, you could also have a box to type the eircode into. Only one address can exist per eircode, so there's your validation.
What the legality of it would be, I don't know. Once data is in the public domain, who can contain it? If people don't own their own address, and can't keep it private, then surely eircode doesn't own it either.

ukoda

recedite wrote: »

Any of that could be done on an external website similar to the batch geocode app that thierry14 linked to. In addition to putting in the address in one box and seeing the co-ordinates pop up, you could also have a box to type the eircode into. Only one address can exist per eircode, so there's your validation.
What the legality of it would be, I don't know. Once data is in the public domain, who can contain it? If people don't own their own address, and can't keep it private, then surely eircode doesn't own it either.

Yes but companies are going to want the offiical version that's always accurate and up to date, not a DIY job that's a bit dubious and prone to error

recedite

ukoda wrote: »

..always accurate and up to date..

That will depend on how good the management company is at updating the database. Seeing as they have taken around a decade to almost produce the initial offering, (with the current incumbent Capita being involved in one form or another the whole way) I wouldn't be too confident of getting instantaneous updates.

But once the updates are released, there is no reason why they wouldn't appear on external sites almost immediately.

ukoda

recedite wrote: »

That will depend on how good the management company is at updating the database. Seeing as they have taken around a decade to almost produce the initial offering, (with the current incumbent Capita being involved in one form or another the whole way) I wouldn't be too confident of getting instantaneous updates.

But once the updates are released, there is no reason why they wouldn't appear on external sites almost immediately.

Well they have said updates every 3 months, I doubt the likes of Google will implement updates that quickly tho, probably yearly

SPDUB

recedite wrote: »

An Post regularly writes to people telling them their address has changed.
Even in Dublin where the postal districts are in use, people get told to use one townland area name instead of another, which irritates them, but they do it anyway because they want to receive their post.

That's because people love to put down a district number that doesn't deliver to their house or a area name that isn't in that district
eg especially prevalent with D24 being put down as D16 or parts of D12 ,D6 and D6W being written as Templeogue

Why do An Post do it? Because, they might want to move the sorting office, and the High Court says they can.

They moved about 5 offices in Dublin in the last few years and at least 2 of them aren't inside the boundaries of their districts any more so how does your theory work there

That case was about Comreg wanting to micromanage An Post down to route delivery level and an instruction in that particular case to have 2 separate offices delivering to the same house

Impetus

Sam Russell wrote: »

Revenue.

They collect the property tax from every house in Ireland, so just say from now on your address is as follows:

340 The Long Road,
Ballygobackwards,
Co Offgoye,
W11 YXLN

Please use this in all correspondence.

The TAX people.

It worked for the LPT.

Why include a county name in the mailing address? No other country does this. It is like RTE - we will now go to Mike in Fermoy, Co Cork. Everybody knows where Fermoy is. There is no need to be a county name robot - a la dumb gov.ie.

Why use a postcode that looks as if you are in London, GB (eg W11 YXLN)? Why does your proposed postcode not comply with normal EU / global format and layout - ie

IE-5722 Ballygobackwards would get your item to that town without mentioning of the country or country, if posted virtually anywhere in the world.

Dysfunctional IRL permanent gov = dumb, in the extreme.

When you call a phone number you don't have to dial the county, and town and townland etc. before the number. Same for email addresses. Ireland and the ejits who run it seem to live in the 18th century.

Perhaps the most telling point of the posting is the choice of town name "Ballygobackwards". Need one say more?

ukoda

Impetus wrote: »

Why include a county name in the mailing address? No other country does this. It is like RTE - we will now go to Mike in Fermoy, Co Cork. Everybody knows where Fermoy is. There is no need to be a county name robot - a la dumb gov.ie.

The use of County is predominately a British / Irish thing and used to some extent in the US, most other countries use Province / locality / district instead of counties.

Nothing wrong with using a county in an address.

oscarBravo

Impetus wrote: »

Everybody knows where Fermoy is.

Yup. And everyone knows where Ballina is, and everyone knows where Ballycastle is, and everyone knows where Newcastle is...

Why does your proposed postcode not comply with normal EU / global format and layout - ie

IE-5722 Ballygobackwards would get your item to that town...

And once it gets to the town, what? you collect it from the newsagent?

Ireland has non-unique addresses. Either we introduce unique addresses, or we design unique postcodes. You can argue that we should have done the former (and, heaven knows, there are no shortage of people arguing that we should do just that), but we've done the latter, and that's why our codes look like they do.

When you call a phone number you don't have to dial the county, and town and townland etc. before the number. Same for email addresses.

In theory, you could address an envelope with nothing but the eircode and have it delivered. If the number of lines on the envelope is what bothers you, you should love eircode.