National Postcodes to be introduced

plodder

oscarBravo wrote: »

The one where you said both "in most cases" and "literally nobody would have to change"?

if it wasn't clear, then let me restate it.

In most cases where new builds occur, literally nobody would have to change their Eircode.

the reason being that a new small-area code gets created for the new area and every existing house in the old one retains its existing code.

oscarBravo

plodder wrote: »

if it wasn't clear, then let me restate it.

In most cases where new builds occur, literally nobody would have to change their Eircode.

the reason being that a new small-area code gets created for the new area and every existing house in the old one retains its existing code.

And in other cases, an existing small area gets divided into multiple small areas - or the small area boundaries change in other ways - and in those cases, people's codes change.

Alternatively, CSO is hamstrung by not being able to change small area boundaries in a way that suits its needs.

Either way, you've got a fairly serious stumbling block to the adoption of what, at first glance, seems like it might be a good solution. Which is my point: it's a better solution in some ways; worse in others.

Carawaystick

FishOnABike wrote: »

In either case (eircode or geo-code based postal code) the final navigation step is visual. Once you are near enough to see the houses you are near enough to see if the house name or number matches the address on the post.

I'd forgotten about the eircode being the building centroid.
But the case I had in mind is a rural semi-d cottage. No house name/number
possibly different coloured doors though...

plodder

oscarBravo wrote: »

And in other cases, an existing small area gets divided into multiple small areas - or the small area boundaries change in other ways - and in those cases, people's codes change.

Alternatively, CSO is hamstrung by not being able to change small area boundaries in a way that suits its needs.

Either way, you've got a fairly serious stumbling block to the adoption of what, at first glance, seems like it might be a good solution. Which is my point: it's a better solution in some ways; worse in others.

I think it's being overstated though as a post-hoc justification for Eircode. Same thing existed with the telephone network. Due to its hierarchical structure occasionally when things didn't develop exactly as planned some renumbering was required. It wasn't a major imposition.

.. and before anyone makes the point. Yes, the phone network had to be designed that way originally, and doesn't any more, but I am only talking about the nature of the problem caused by occasional unavoidable renumbering. It happened rarely and wasn't a big deal.

oscarBravo

plodder wrote: »

I think it's being overstated though as a post-hoc justification for Eircode.

On the contrary, I'm pretty sure it was a design criterion.

plodder

oscarBravo wrote: »

On the contrary, I'm pretty sure it was a design criterion.

I don't think so. Hierarchy wasn't ruled out in the tender document. It was a design decision by Capita post award. That's what I am reading from Capita's unpublished design document at least.

The final tender stipulated a 3 character routing key and a four character unique identifier. A second level of hierarchy could have been included there.

It was a design detail maybe we can agree on that ...

FishOnABike

oscarBravo wrote: »

Given that the whole point of a postal code is to locate a premises....

Would a location-based code be better for some things? Sure. Would it have been acceptable for this application? No, because its hierarchy is based on geographical squares, which makes it useless to An Post, and if An Post wasn't prepared to work with it, it was never going to happen.

How would a location-based code which locates a premises be useless to An Post? To deliver post one needs to locate the delivery point.

The current half random, An Post routing area is limited in that the routing areas are fixed and do not easily allow for changing routing in future. Should a district be moved from one An Post delivery depot to another in future due to delivery routing consolidation or optimisation we could have needing to be sorted to a different delivery depot than the routing area part of the eircode indicates.

A location based post code need not impose any predefined grouping and would be future proof for reassignment between routing areas or aggregation by other delivery companies, local authorities, government departments, statisticians, marketing companies, etc. It would also have been operator neutral, one of the original design recommendations, something which the current solution fails in.

For delivering post the delivery point needs to be identified / located. For example The Old Infirmary, Johns Hill, Waterford has one delivery point to which sixty apartments are mapped. Why is it necessary to have sixty eircodes to identify the one delivery point ? eircode would appear to be over engineered for its stated purpose in some areas and under engineered in others.

oscarBravo

plodder wrote: »

I don't think so. Hierarchy wasn't ruled out in the tender document. It was a design decision by Capita post award.

I'm not talking about lack of hierarchy being a design criterion; I'm talking about the requirement that codes be as permanent as possible. A small area hierarchy would either breach that requirement, or hamstring CSO.

FishOnABike wrote: »

How would a location-based code which locates a premises be useless to An Post?

I'm finding it wryly amusing that I'm simultaneously arguing with someone who feels the code should have been hierarchical in the way it is, only more so; and also with someone who feels that it should be based on geometric squares.

It neatly illustrates the point that everyone has their own beliefs on how the code should have been designed, based on the criteria that they themselves deem most important. If your personal preferences had been the primary consideration, we'd have a grid-based location code. If plodder's desires were paramount, we'd have a small area-based code. If Gary Delaney's wishes were fulfilled, we'd have Loc8 codes.

Basically, lots of people are arguing that Eircodes should be different because they personally would weigh the criteria differently. Which is fine, except that Eircodes weren't designed around your personal preferences.

plodder

oscarBravo wrote: »

I'm not talking about lack of hierarchy being a design criterion; I'm talking about the requirement that codes be as permanent as possible. A small area hierarchy would either breach that requirement, or hamstring CSO.

Whose requirement? Yours maybe, but it wasn't one that the dept. imposed on the winning bidder.

I'm finding it wryly amusing that I'm simultaneously arguing with someone who feels the code should have been hierarchical in the way it is, only more so; and also with someone who feels that it should be based on geometric squares.

I don't see the problem. People have different opinions. It's not like there is a single conspiracy against Eircode.

It neatly illustrates the point that everyone has their own beliefs on how the code should have been designed, based on the criteria that they themselves deem most important. If your personal preferences had been the primary consideration, we'd have a grid-based location code. If plodder's desires were paramount, we'd have a small area-based code. If Gary Delaney's wishes were fulfilled, we'd have Loc8 codes.

Basically, lots of people are arguing that Eircodes should be different because they personally would weigh the criteria differently. Which is fine, except that Eircodes weren't designed around your personal preferences.

On this matter that we are discussing, they were designed according to the preference of the winning bidder. That's the point I'm making. The Dept didn't decree that there shouldn't be a hierarchical code.

If I was capita I might have done it the same way. Make it as easy as possible for myself, maximise my own revenue, while keeping to the letter of the contract. Doesn't mean it was objectively the best possible design.

TheBustedFlush

The recommendations from the Postcode Working Group are recommendations - not precise design criteria.

The requirements that postcodes be granular enough, at least to small area, means exactly that. They need to be precise enough to resolve down to at least small area size - NOT that they should equate to specific small areas. The final code design used goes further, it resolves down to building level so that recommendation is met.

The PWG wanted to have a code that identified individual buildings, and were set to recommend that, except for the late stage response from the Data Protection guy at the time, which meant they had to revert to recommending a group or cluster-based code.

With subsequent consultations and lobbying from various interests, the recommendation changed to a single building level code. It's what a range of interests wanted across healthcare, insurance, financial, retail, etc. In fact, for maintaining competitive positions, some logistics companies did not want a building level code, they wanted to stop at cluster-level, ideally linked to a road/street.

The actual final design criteria ruled out a number of approaches/code offerings. These criteria were:

1. First three characters of the code must denote the An Post post-town for an address
2. Incorporate the codes of the existing Dublin districts
3. Avoid the use of place names in code
4. The code not to be longer than ten characters, including any spaces
5. Be consistent and memorable
6. Each code, on its own, must identify a postal address, incl. apartments
7. Be compatible and integrate with An Post's systems (i.e. use of post-towns)
8. Prioritise coding postal addresses but could be used for coding other places or points of information as long as it didn't negatively affect coding addresses
9. Be able to accommodate changes in capacity and technology
10. Include the new postcodes in a new postal address database to be created from GeoDirectory.

From a quick glance at those 10 specs, I reckon Loc8 would have failed on 9 of them as a design.

As someone observed earlier, it was possible to include more characters to denote smaller areas or boundaries within the code as well as identifying the full postal address (incl apts). That design decision was left with the bidding companies on how this would be done. Using atomic small areas would be subject to change as these would change over time. However, Eircode have included them as a reference area within their database.

As another poster observed earlier, the final design is a compromise between various needs (demands), maintenance costs, and being politically acceptable. What's interesting is that members of the public who've received their code and have written to media, commented publicly, etc, seem to be more focussed on the "address" they were given. Nobody seems to really mind that they are in V54 or T68, etc. However, this may change as people get to understand what areas/houses are included within their routing key area, and which ones are not.

FishOnABike

oscarBravo wrote: »

I'm not talking about lack of hierarchy being a design criterion; I'm talking about the requirement that codes be as permanent as possible. A small area hierarchy would either breach that requirement, or hamstring CSO.

But a coordinate based system wouldn't breach that requirement, or hamstring CSO.

oscarBravo wrote: »

I'm finding it wryly amusing that I'm simultaneously arguing with someone who feels the code should have been hierarchical in the way it is, only more so; and also with someone who feels that it should be based on geometric squares.

Coordinate, district, small area based systems are all hierarchical. If you look at what both plodder, I and others have in common is a view that a structured code that enables the end user locate a delivery point without having to refer to an external (paid for) lookup is better suited to its purpose.

oscarBravo wrote: »

It neatly illustrates the point that everyone has their own beliefs on how the code should have been designed, based on the criteria that they themselves deem most important. If your personal preferences had been the primary consideration, we'd have a grid-based location code. If plodder's desires were paramount, we'd have a small area-based code. If Gary Delaney's wishes were fulfilled, we'd have Loc8 codes.

And what we all have in common is a reasoned logical consideration that a structured system would have been far better than the current mess that is eircode.

Do we throw books back into a library randomly over the floor, tables, chairs, trolleys etc..? No, they are stored in a structured manner, on the shelves by section, title, author, etc... which makes it easy to find a particular book.

Whether it is the traditional address structure of county, postal town, townland, house; county, town, estate, street, house or some form of hierarchical code, structure makes things easier to find.

oscarBravo wrote: »

Basically, lots of people are arguing that Eircodes should be different because they personally would weigh the criteria differently. Which is fine, except that Eircodes weren't designed around your personal preferences.

I don't think it can be dismissed as being just down to personal preference. Reasoned logical arguments have been put forward as to why and how a structured postal code is preferable to a random one. In the absence of stronger counter arguments one has to wonder why and how we ended up with the sub-optimal expensive random mess we have now.

You seem to have missed the question I posed earlier

Originally Posted by FishOnABike
How would a location-based code which locates a premises be useless to An Post? To deliver post one needs to locate the delivery point.


From my arguments a coordinate based post code would be more functional, flexible and future proof not only for An Post but for other operators also.

PK2008

plodder wrote: »

Whose requirement? Yours maybe, but it wasn't one that the dept. imposed on the winning bidder.

I don't see the problem. People have different opinions. It's not like there is a single conspiracy against Eircode.

On this matter that we are discussing, they were designed according to the preference of the winning bidder. That's the point I'm making. The Dept didn't decree that there shouldn't be a hierarchical code.

If I was capita I might have done it the same way. Make it as easy as possible for myself, maximise my own revenue, while keeping to the letter of the contract. Doesn't mean it was objectively the best possible design.

To be fair it was a consortium bid, my guess is that Auto Address are the guys behind the coding, Capita more than likely provide the finanical security (insurance) and clout in terms of big government project experience. Auto Address are an Irish company (from what I can tell). I'd say Loc8 slipped up by not partnering with someone like Capita on their bid.

recedite

FishOnABike wrote: »

For delivering post the delivery point needs to be identified / located. For example The Old Infirmary, Johns Hill, Waterford has one delivery point to which sixty apartments are mapped. Why is it necessary to have sixty eircodes to identify the one delivery point ?

60 different property taxes to be correlated with 60 individually owned properties?

FishOnABike

TheBustedFlush wrote: »

The actual final design criteria ruled out a number of approaches/code offerings. These criteria were:

1. First three characters of the code must denote the An Post post-town for an address
2. Incorporate the codes of the existing Dublin districts
3. Avoid the use of place names in code
4. The code not to be longer than ten characters, including any spaces
5. Be consistent and memorable
6. Each code, on its own, must identify a postal address, incl. apartments
7. Be compatible and integrate with An Post's systems (i.e. use of post-towns)
8. Prioritise coding postal addresses but could be used for coding other places or points of information as long as it didn't negatively affect coding addresses
9. Be able to accommodate changes in capacity and technology
10. Include the new postcodes in a new postal address database to be created from GeoDirectory.

From a quick glance at those 10 specs, I reckon Loc8 would have failed on 9 of them as a design.

Can you explain which 9 it would fail on and why ? I'd see two as being superfluous and/or easily worked around and loc8 or any of the other coordinate based systems meeting the other 8.

TheBustedFlush

PK2008 wrote: »

To be fair it was a consortium bid, my guess is that Auto Address are the guys behind the coding, Capita more than likely provide the finanical security (insurance) and clout in terms of big government project experience. Auto Address are an Irish company (from what I can tell). I'd say Loc8 slipped up by not partnering with someone like Capita on their bid.

Correct - it would seem that Loc8 were not excluded from bidding per se. They could have teamed up with other companies - if they had needed to meet the €40m turnover requirement - but they didn't have to necessarily as there were approaches possible.

However, they would still have run up against a brick wall in the final design criteria - so they probably saved themselves a lot of bother.

TheBustedFlush

FishOnABike wrote: »

Can you explain which 9 it would fail on and why ? I'd see two as being superfluous and/or easily worked around and loc8 or any of the other coordinate based systems meeting the other 8.

Might be easier to explain the one it passes
Doesn't use place names in its code.

The rest are self-evident.

If a scoring system or minimum requirement is used for a tender process, deciding as a bidder that something is "superfluous" is not going to work in getting you marks or even getting a required pass.

plodder

TheBustedFlush wrote: »

As someone observed earlier, it was possible to include more characters to denote smaller areas or boundaries within the code as well as identifying the full postal address (incl apts). That design decision was left with the bidding companies on how this would be done.

Correct

Using atomic small areas would be subject to change as these would change over time.

This is what we are discussing. I find that to be a rather blithe assumption that doesn't stand up when you examine it. So, it's my belief that the decision was wrong

However, Eircode have included them as a reference area within their database.

Yes, but you have to license the dataset in order to make use of it.

It's very apparent from your post that the project team did consult among some major industrial and government sectors, but small business is the sector that is gaining least from this project. Pity.

flushed busted

TheBustedFlush wrote: »

The actual final design criteria ruled out a number of approaches/code offerings. These criteria were:

1. First three characters of the code must denote the An Post post-town for an address
2. Incorporate the codes of the existing Dublin districts
3. Avoid the use of place names in code
4. The code not to be longer than ten characters, including any spaces
5. Be consistent and memorable
6. Each code, on its own, must identify a postal address, incl. apartments
7. Be compatible and integrate with An Post's systems (i.e. use of post-towns)
8. Prioritise coding postal addresses but could be used for coding other places or points of information as long as it didn't negatively affect coding addresses
9. Be able to accommodate changes in capacity and technology
10. Include the new postcodes in a new postal address database to be created from GeoDirectory.

isn't this very similar to the insight into the tender offered on the gocode website? All of which of course differs greatly from the tender specification and indeed PA Consulting's own recommendations to the Department in Oct 2010 when they forcibly insisted on the ABC 123 model as the only viable option to suit An Post. All equally echoed by an a senior Department official in his explanations to the PAC in 2014. I think most would agree that if a tender specification was to be changed so radically then the tender should have been restarted. Is that not the rule?

Is it that there are few trying to rewrite history or is it just the one. One that is resetting the record and preparing the scene for a have-another-go code? Didn't Deputy Doherty ask some questions of Minister White on that very subject in the parliament recently?

plodder

flushed busted wrote: »

isn't this very similar to the insight into the tender offered on the gocode website? All of which of course differs greatly from the tender specification and indeed PA Consulting's own recommendations to the Department in Oct 2010 when they forcibly insisted on the ABC 123 model as the only viable option to suit An Post. All equally echoed by an a senior Department official in his explanations to the PAC in 2014. I think most would agree that if a tender specification was to be changed so radically then the tender should have been restarted. Is that not the rule?

Is it that there are few trying to rewrite history or is it just the one. One that is resetting the record and preparing the scene for a have-another-go code? Didn't Deputy Doherty ask some questions of Minister White on that very subject in the parliament recently?

have-another-go code ..

Very droll

oscarBravo

plodder wrote: »

Using atomic small areas would be subject to change as these would change over time.

This is what we are discussing. I find that to be a rather blithe assumption that doesn't stand up when you examine it.

http://www.cso.ie/en/census/census2011boundaryfiles/

Small Areas

Small Areas are areas of population comprising between 50 and 200 dwellings created by The National Institute of Regional and Spatial Analysis(NIRSA) on behalf of the Ordnance Survey Ireland(OSi) in consultation with CSO. Small Areas were designed as the lowest level of geography for the compilation of statistics in line with data protection and generally comprise either complete or part of townlands or neighbourhoods. There is a constraint on Small Areas that they must nest within Electoral Division boundaries.

Small areas were used as the basis for the Enumeration in Census 2011. Enumerators were assigned a number of adjacent Small Areas constituting around 400 dwelling in which they had to visit every dwelling and deliver and collect a completed census form and record the dwelling status of unoccupied dwellings.

The small area boundaries have been amended in line with population data from Census 2011

plodder

I've explained above how and in what circumstances I think they would change in practical terms. There's nothing to suggest from the above that it would be any different in reality. ie big increases in population would result in new areas being created, not affecting existing ones. There is also considerable flexibility between 50 and 200 dwellings.

oscarBravo

plodder wrote: »

I've explained above how and in what circumstances I think they would change in practical terms. There's nothing to suggest from the above that it would be any different in reality. ie big increases in population would result in new areas being created, not affecting existing ones. There is also considerable flexibility between 50 and 200 dwellings.

That's just hand-waving the problem away as unlikely, not addressing it.

Have a look at the small area in the middle of this picture:



Are you really saying that you can't imagine any scenario in which it would make sense to divide that small area into two new ones?

plodder

oscarBravo wrote: »

That's just hand-waving the problem away as unlikely, not addressing it.

Have a look at the small area in the middle of this picture:



Are you really saying that you can't imagine any scenario in which it would make sense to divide that small area into two new ones?

It's certainly not absolutely necessary and I think the most likely scenarios would just see a new area created in the middle. But, sure, you could split the existing one, or you could expand the one on the bottom left. There are many ways to do it.

clewbays

plodder wrote: »

It's certainly not absolutely necessary and I think the most likely scenarios would just see a new area created in the middle. But, sure, you could split the existing one, or you could expand the one on the bottom left. There are many ways to do it.

The way chosen would be determined by the location of the new build and the new access roads. There is no way that any of the existing houses could remain in the same small area as they would not be consistent with 2011 e.g. the demographic profile of the residents would have changed as some 2011 dwellings would no longer be included in the original small area.

Does anyone know what commitment there is to maintaining small areas especially in inter-censal periods? Has NIRSA agreed to do it? Who will pay them? Has OSi taken over responsibility for mapping them and allocating new dwellings?

TheBustedFlush

flushed busted wrote: »

isn't this very similar to the insight into the tender offered on the gocode website?

Not similar - the same. I read them on that site.

clewbays wrote: »

The way chosen would be determined by the location of the new build and the new access roads. There is no way that any of the existing houses could remain in the same small area as they would not be consistent with 2011 e.g. the demographic profile of the residents would have changed as some 2011 dwellings would no longer be included in the original small area.

Thats what I thought was the way it happened - it's related to numbers of population, so census would drive any changes to these.

Jack180570

Loc8 Code are dead right...Eircode IS no use for tourists because they cannot put the Eircode into a sat nav and get to the tourist attraction. ... what an unbelievable waste of money.

ukoda wrote: »

So if i remember correctly, there was a claim by loc8 or others that eircode was no good for tourists, as "tourist attractions don't get post"

did a little bit of looking, below are the top 10 paid and the top 10 free tourist attractions in Ireland (source)


Paid:
Guinness Storehouse: D08 VF8H
Dublin Zoo: D08 AC98
Cliffs of Moher: V95 KN9T
National Aquatic Centre: D15 A6WR
Book of Kells, TCD: D02 F306
Tayto Park: A84 EA02
St Patricks Cathedral: D08 H6X3
Fota Wildlife park: T45 CD93
Blarney Castle: T23 Y598
Kilmainham Goal: D08 T2X5

Free:
National Gallery of Ireland: D02 K303
National Botanic Gardens: D09 VY63
Farmleigh: D15 TD50
National Museum of Ireland, Archaeology: D02 FH48
Newbridge Silverware, Kildare: W12 HT62
Science Gallery: D02 AP03
National History Museum, Natural History: D02 F627
National Library: D02 A322
National Museum of Ireland, Collins Barracks: D07 XKV4
Chester Beaty Library: D02 AD92

This one didn't make the top 20 but i like it and the eircode points right to the entrance:
Mitchelstown Caves: E21 H920

and not to forget Loc8's favourite example of "Rock of Cashel won't have an eircode" well actually lads:
Rock of Cashel: E25 KX44

Jack180570

"The operation was a success but the patient died".... the new postcode was supposed to be beneficial to the general public. .. it's not. .. it's useless because the general public cannot put eircode into a sat nav and navigate to the eircode address. ... that's one of the major benefits of a postcode to the public. ... amazing how this simple fact appears to have been forgotten by some people

clewbays wrote: »

That's only the 2nd mistake reported here. The first one was where it was delivered to the company even though they had moved address. Did the house down the road also get their own notification? From what you said, it looks like the problem is with your postman.

Looks like a hugely successful delivery of Eircodes given that all addresses should have been done by Friday. The nay sayers and the drama queens must be horrified!

TheChizler

It's also amazing how some people expect full 3rd party integration 2 weeks after it being made official.

G_R

Jack180570 wrote: »

"The operation was a success but the patient died".... the new postcode was supposed to be beneficial to the general public. .. it's not. .. it's useless because the general public cannot put eircode into a sat nav and navigate to the eircode address. ... that's one of the major benefits of a postcode to the public. ... amazing how this simple fact appears to have been forgotten by some people

Yet.

Give the sat nav companies/google maps a chance to implement something that was launched a fortnight ago.

Also - visit finder.eircode.ie, enter eircode, hit directions et viola - you're brought to the door.

Jack180570

Same kind of amazement one would suffer if one purchased a new car to be told that one could not drive it away until the garage figured out how to get the car working.

TheChizler wrote: »

It's also amazing how some people expect full 3rd party integration 2 weeks after it being made official.