National Postcodes to be introduced

Leonard Shelby

aimhigh wrote: »

as I said to you elsewhere, they can't change the key terms of an open tender competition without stopping and starting again or face serious legal challenges!

sounds like your sudden arrival here is to help blot out all that was ever promised/specified before and help the spin along;- good luck with that!

I thought I was just bantering with a "know-it-all" who wouldn't accept they could be wrong, but obviously you've got a whole "conspiracy theory" going on. Good luck with that.

aimhigh

Leonard Shelby wrote: »

I thought I was just bantering with a "know-it-all" who wouldn't accept they could be wrong, but obviously you've got a whole "conspiracy theory" going on. Good luck with that.

first one to come on this thread since 2009 to support a politician is hardly just "bantering" to be fair!

Leonard Shelby

aimhigh wrote: »

first one to come on this thread since 2009 to support a politician is hardly just "bantering" to be fair!

And the reporter for the Sunday Business Post, what part in the conspiracy is he playing? Is the entire government and the media and anyone who disagrees with you part of a great conspiracy? I said nothing in support of any politician (not that it would matter), I've simply quoted the newspapers.

So what position do you actually have

A) You absolutely know that unique postcodes aren't coming, and that any postcodes we might get will be years away
There is a conspiracy by the government to make you believe A) but really they are going to do the opposite just to annoy you

aimhigh

Leonard Shelby wrote: »

And the reporter for the Sunday Business Post, what part in the conspiracy is he playing? Is the entire government and the media and anyone who disagrees with you part of a great conspiracy? I said nothing in support of any politician (not that it would matter), I've simply quoted the newspapers.

So what position do you actually have

A) You absolutely know that unique postcodes aren't coming, and that any postcodes we might get will be years away
There is a conspiracy by the government to make you believe A) but really they are going to do the opposite just to annoy you

I know nothing of the future - the facts are in the past.

Politicians (and their advisors) rejoice in announcements - others require results instead!

aimhigh

Just for clarity:
This country needs a postcode which is a unique identifier, and with all the other necessary characteristics too, and I will rejoice loudly when all that is required is successfully delivered.

But I arrived on here to encourage sticking to facts rather than speculation; so.....

A headline that a Minister is bringing proposals to Government is hardly ground breaking news. Eamon Ryan did the same for postcodes in December 2010 but we are still waiting for the results!

Noel Dempsey announced a target of a postcode in place by Jan 2008, Eamon Ryan said end 2010 and then 2011. Pat Rabbitte said end 2012 and then mid 2013. So the record is not particularly good in relation to targets! (Fact)

And now a new announcement from Pat Rabbitte that his revised "target" is the end of 2014! After all that's gone before, this is not exactly something to rejoice over!

Odds are that P. Rabbitte will not even be in that Ministry by then and based on history, which holds the only facts we have, there is a good chance that Mr Leonard Shelby (or another similar incarnation with the same convenient amnesia) will be encouraging us to be excited over new anouncements many times between now and Christmas 2014 AD!

.....and lets not forget that the end of 2014 AD will be exactly 7 years after the first Government target was missed..... so hopefully you can see why I am not getting too excited!

AD = After Dempsey

ukoda

so its approved according to breakingnews.ie, a 7 digit "unique" code, rolled out before 2015

http://breakingnews.ie/ireland/cabinet-signs-off-on-new-postcode-system-609472.html

ManAboutCouch

Press release on the DCENR site here:

http://www.dcenr.gov.ie/Press+Releases/2013/RABBITTE+GETS+GREEN+LIGHT+NEXT+GEN+POSTCODE+BY+2015.htm

Unique postcodes for every address point in the country.

ciaran76

Dublin keeps its postcodes also - well sort of.

murpho999

So have they found the right solution that was sought here?

SpaceTime

If it actually identifies each individual point, yeah. If not, it's not much use.

Sounds relatively OK though if it's at least getting down to a unique code per property. However, it sounds like there's a database behind it. No database was the big advantage to Loc8 and open postcode.

The downside of those two systems was they were relatively non-human readable i.e. the codes were completely random.

ManAboutCouch

It does identify each address, so yes it should be useful.

The first 3 characters will identify the postal district / post town and the other 4 characters will uniquely identify the individual property.

JohnC.

Given who's running it, I'll believe it a success when it's actually here and working properly.

mackerski

SpaceTime wrote: »

However, it sounds like there's a database behind it. No database was the big advantage to Loc8 and open postcode.

It makes (relatively) little difference whether a proprietary database or a proprietary algorithm is behind a postcode - in either case, you can't look one up it without paying for the rights first.

Scartbeg

So, its going to to be tied to a database.
Which means it will be perpetually out of date and cost a fortune to maintain/update.

Once updates are added to the central database, these will need to be promulgated to SatNav providers, then updated by end users on their own devices in order that a courier, emergency services etc can use your "location code" to find you.

From my own experience in the UK, it took almost 3 years for my new house to appear on the main SatNav providers.

No use if you want deliveries to a temporary location e.g. sports event, exhibition, construction site.

A huge disappointment, once again pandering to vested interests who could only propose a system that would guarantee them ongoing income, regardless that it is not the most elegant or technically competent solution.

recedite

Who is in this "Capita Ireland" consortium that has been given the licence to (own?) run the postcode system for the next 10-15 years?

murpho999

Scartbeg wrote: »

So, its going to to be tied to a database.
Which means it will be perpetually out of date and cost a fortune to maintain/update.

Once updates are added to the central database, these will need to be promulgated to SatNav providers, then updated by end users on their own devices in order that a courier, emergency services etc can use your "location code" to find you.

From my own experience in the UK, it took almost 3 years for my new house to appear on the main SatNav providers.

No use if you want deliveries to a temporary location e.g. sports event, exhibition, construction site.

A huge disappointment, once again pandering to vested interests who could only propose a system that would guarantee them ongoing income, regardless that it is not the most elegant or technically competent solution.

Well in the future aren't "Sat Nav Providers" going to be on phones, rather than Garmin devices so it will all go quicker and easier.

I think the internet will look after a lot of your worries.

I really don't think that temporary locations is a huge issue either.

mackerski

Scartbeg wrote: »

So, its going to to be tied to a database.
Which means it will be perpetually out of date and cost a fortune to maintain/update.

Once updates are added to the central database, these will need to be promulgated to SatNav providers, then updated by end users on their own devices in order that a courier, emergency services etc can use your "location code" to find you.

From my own experience in the UK, it took almost 3 years for my new house to appear on the main SatNav providers.

No use if you want deliveries to a temporary location e.g. sports event, exhibition, construction site.

A huge disappointment, once again pandering to vested interests who could only propose a system that would guarantee them ongoing income, regardless that it is not the most elegant or technically competent solution.

The postcode hasn't been designed to handle those temporary locations. Luckily there are co-ordinate systems perfectly well adapted to describing ad hoc locations in terms that (unlike a postcode) don't need to support aggregations of nearby or related locations (as was desired for a postcode).

SpaceTime

I agree on the sat nav situation.

A system like loc8 is very handy though for unconventional locations.

mackerski

SpaceTime wrote: »

I agree on the sat nav situation.

A system like loc8 is very handy though for unconventional locations.

In these days of digital social media we are already sharing locations in ways that bypass the need to key _anything_ in, be it a garbage string, a co-ordinate pair or even a postal address. We don't need a new layer of obfuscation between us and our satnavs. Postcodes try to solve a different problem.

LeinsterDub

The Postcode will be a 7 character code in the format A65 B2CD, with the first three characters relating to a general area or postal district in which the address is located.

1,679,616 postcodes in each area unless there is some sort of checksum

IrlJidel

LeinsterDub wrote: »

1,679,616 postcodes in each area unless there is some sort of checksum

Wonder if all alphanumeric characters be used or will they omit 1 I, 0 O etc

SpaceTime

You can get around that by always knowing which character's a letter and which is a number too.

So let's say

AAA A99A

Where 9 = Number and A = letter.

The example the press release gave is : A65 B2CD

So it's be A99 A9AA

antoinolachtnai

Sure, but this is really a bad design from a memorability point of view. It is hard to see the point of this arrangement.

The leading research (http://www.k-report.net/diskuse/archiv2008/54342/Design_a_license_plate_for_memorability_ERGONOMICS_2005-141335.pdf) makes it very clear that this sort of code, with loads of numbers and letters mixed up is pretty hard to remember.

The only rational for this design decision seems to be that that is what Noel Dempsey decided the arrangement should be, five years ago. There was apparently some belief, totally unfounded, that this would make the code memorable.

A lot of other bad design decisions were thrown away from what we can see, and this is to be welcomed. Two examples are the decision not to go down to building level and the proposal for a closed, proprietary address database. It seems unfair to the contractors to saddle them with this obviously bad design decision. The decision about retaining Dublin postal zones does not seem great either. It will make it impossible to integrate the code with the Small Areas.

sesswhat

or A55 H0LE

SpaceTime

I don't think a 7-digit alphanumeric code is that much of a challenge for most people.

At most you'll need to remember a few and the rest you'll probably have in your address book or stored in your mobile or whatever.

antoinolachtnai

Even with their much simpler reg plate, the Dutch had a lot of trouble with this stuff.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/netherlands/8104855/Dutch-call-back-car-licence-plates-with-Nazi-initials.html

I would really still think that using only digits is the way to go. Only a tiny number of countries worldwide use letters in a postcode.

antoinolachtnai

SpaceTime wrote: »

I don't think a 7-digit alphanumeric code is that much of a challenge for most people.

At most you'll need to remember a few and the rest you'll probably have in your address book or stored in your mobile or whatever.

Sure. The issue is really to be able to remember it while you are transcribing it. No one is going to be going around memorising postcodes.

SpaceTime

SpaceTime wrote: »

I don't think a 7-digit alphanumeric code is that much of a challenge for most people.

At most you'll need to remember a few and the rest you'll probably have in your address book or stored in your mobile or whatever.

I never had any problems remembering my alphanumeric postcode while living in the UK, everyone used them all the time, so they became part of the address and remembered as such.

recipio

why, o why is it going to take until 'early 2015' to 'develop' this system. Must be the same advisers that Enda used for the referendum.

irishgeo

recipio wrote: »

why, o why is it going to take until 'early 2015' to 'develop' this system. Must be the same advisers that Enda used for the referendum.

dont have to give everyone a unique code, should be handy for tracing properties for the property tax as well.