[parsi]

Originally Posted by probe

Virtually all French mail (one of the biggest countries in Europe) arrives next day. Virtually all mail posted on the Continent arrives J+1 (ie post it Monday, it is delivered Wednesday).

I wouldn't call an average of 81.3% "virtually all French mail" ...

http://www.laposte.fr/IMG/pdf/Commun...u_Courrier.pdf

It's better than AN Post but not up to Comreg's desired 94%

[probe]

Originally Posted by Victor

Surely number 123 would be 78291123?

Of course, cos its 90210-8922.

Not necessarily - because you are going to waste a lot of numbering space within any fixed length code structure if the last 3 digits = what should be the house number.

In addition, the minimum postal district number has to be at least 3 digits. If you are going to give a postcode to each house, each street will end up having a code - so that is at least another 3 digits to point to the street. And another 3 digits for the house/building. 3 digit house numbers locks you out of metric street numbering - because many roads are several km long bringing you into four and sometimes five digit house numbers. You also have to fit in apartment buildings with postcodes for each apartment, office buildings with multiple tenants, postcodes for PO Box numbers etc. etc. etc.

And someone has to maintain all these codes in a timely manner as 100,000 new buildings a year go up. For the entire country! €€€€€€ and mistakes all over the place and for what?

.probe

[probe]

Originally Posted by antoinolachtnai

Probe, are you happy enough that when postal sorting is changed, the postcodes should change too?

What changes are proposed in postal sorting please? How often do district numbers change in the Dublin area? Virtually all the "changes" over the past 20 years or so amounted to the allocation of district numbers to areas that didn't have any (and usually previously called "Co Dublin" [eg Foxrock, Co Dublin became D18] When you have the entire country coded to district number level, the system remains very stable and requires very little maintenance in terms of postcode boundary issues.

Why does An Post say it does not need a postcode if what you say about sorting accuracy is true?

Surely that is obvious from my rather long posting yesterday! Sorting is based on grid references for streets and delivery points. If everybody computer-printed all their envelopes in a machine readable way with the correct address and every house had a house number they wouldn't need postcodes because 99% of letters would be machine readable and fly through the system. They would have no problem meeting Comreg's "targets" (sick joke). But a postcode has far more uses than sorting the post.... bla. bla. bla. And 25 to 30% of Irish mail will always have handwritten addresses... And Irish addresses are far too long anyway so they need to be rationalised.

Do you think Geodirectory should no longer be proprietary?

Ideally it should not - but it doesn't matter as far as I am concerned. What should not be proprietary is the postcode list. This should be freely downloadable from the internet as is the case for so many continental countries.

.probe

[probe]

Originally Posted by Solair

I really don't think there's any issue with long codes. We all handle 10 digit phone nos with out the slightest problem.

087 555 5555
or 1-800 555 555

Can't really see why a long post code would be any issue at all.

There is a big difference between you presenting a super-easy to remember phone number to us in this discussion and someone sitting in a call centre typing in postcodes into a VDU all day, trying to listen to people with all sorts of different accents and disabilities and reading abilities. Either or both parties can make a mistake.

Would everyone remember their postcode and all the other postcodes they need for their lives?

You then have to set up time cocnsuming procedures to deal with cases where people can't remember or don't have their 9 digit postcode.

Anyway, nobody has demonstrated a logical need for a long postcode with 21st century IT technology.


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[probe]

Aritcle in a Norwegian newspaper “Aftenposten” of 6.3.2007, cites recent Europe-wide research indicating that most European countries have better than 90% next day delivery performance for letters. One suspects that the survey didn't include Ireland which according to comreg runs at about 72%!*

Quote:

Postal service ranks poorly
Norway's postal service, Posten Norge, has been ranked as among the worst in Europe. It's also among the priciest.

A recent survey of European postal services showed that only 82.4 percent of first-class, so-called "A" letters mailed in Norway were delivered on time last year. The Norwegian postal service is supposed to deliver domestic first-class mail overnight.

Most other European postal services could report that more than 90 percent of first-class mail arrived on time.

Only Latvia and Germany had slower postal service than Norway. Twenty other countries had faster service.

Norwegian postal delivery has also gotten slower in recent years. Between 2001 and 2005, as much as 87 percent of A-post was delivered overnight.

A spokesman for Posten Norge admitted service wasn't good enough in Norway. He claimed, though, that Norway's large land area, isolated settlements and geography made mail delivery more difficult in Norway than elsewhere.

Postal rates just went up again, meanwhile. It now costs NOK 7 (about €0,85) to mail a domestic letter in Norway, nearly three times what it costs in, for example, the US.

Unquote

http://www.aftenposten.no/english/lo...cle1675269.ece

*http://www.comreg.ie/_fileupload/pub...ComReg0519.pdf

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[antoinolachtnai]

Mail is not sorted on the basis of grid references, is it? As I understand it, it is scanned to figure out the unique ID for the delivery point, and then each item is sorted into the relevant walk for that delivery point. There are grid references in there alright, but that's more because the data is derived from OSi maps, than having anything to do with sorting and delivery.

Re stability, Dublin 6 was definitely split during the period you mentioned. Adding new areas to the numbering system generally happened because of a change in delivery practice as I understand it. I heard that there was an adjustment made out around Quarryvale. I've also heard about adjustments up around Dublin 15. It is also hard to believe that a country can go through this degree of economic growth and social change and for a number of delivery offices not to be opened or closed and for routes not to be changed.

Re long postcodes, you yourself have demonstrated the need for seven digits of code (or so) in many addresses. The only thing you are arguing about is that the digits should be split into two sections, with one part at the end of the address and the other at the beginning, rather than having the whole code at the end.

The other purpose of postcodes is for small area statistics. The CSO says they need this to produce statistics about areas smaller than the county and that they cannot do this economically using current techniques.

[antoinolachtnai]

Originally Posted by probe

[FONT=Verdana][SIZE=4]Aritcle in a Norwegian newspaper “Aftenposten” of 6.3.2007, cites recent Europe-wide research indicating that most European countries have better than 90% next day delivery performance for letters. One suspects that the survey didn't include Ireland which according to comreg runs at about 72%!*

What survey are they referring to? There are no citations there. n Post have their own statistics that put the next-day rate as being considerably higher than the ComReg figure. It depends what you measure.

[antoinolachtnai]

Originally Posted by probe

What is missing in the current environment?
a) 40% of houses and other buildings don't have house/building numbers to give them a proper street address.
b) There is no easy means of rapidly finding an address in a database or rapid address entry system - required in call centres, government agencies gathering and providing information on the phone etc. This demand can be filled by a short 4 or 5 digit postcode. Enter the postcode and the system "knows" the district you have in mind. Enter the first one or two letters of the street address and the system knows which street and town is being selected. Enter the house number and the system has the full postal address, which can be matched to the other data in the geodirectory (eg relevant ED number, grid reference, county name, and anything else you want to add). No need for involving the general public in complicated codes.

You've put in a digit for area, down to the nearest 20,000 houses or so. You've put numbers on every house. Why not add one more digit to allow you to confirm the address?
[/quote]

If you have your numeric postcode on the envelope, the work they will have to do is much reduced. (a) There is a far higher probability that the street name will be worked out by the software when it knows that it is only looking at streets in say Waterford city - even though the system mightn't have been able to read the word "Waterford" because of bad handwriting or whatever. (b) Rapid address entry can be deployed from the postcode so the full address can be put into the sorting item database (as described earlier above) with minimal effort in a second or two by trained staff.

Sure. And if you had a more granular system you would be able to automatically sort the same mail into the correct bundles and the correct order, ready for the postman to deliver.

The system I am advocating is the norm - used across Europe within and outside the EU, in Russia, and further afield. On the contrary, the idea of giving every house a postcode instead of a short building number and a separate postcode is a hack that will cost a fortune to set-up and administer with lots of consultants fees, special customised software required solely for the Irish market, and will cost a fortune to maintain and communicate to the public.

I think I said that the idea of having separate blocks of house numbers where two townlands have the same name within the same postal area was a hack. Doing what you suggest with house numbers is the 'norm' in Ireland where two streets have the same name in the same area at the moment. However, it is very bad practice, and causes all sorts of confusion. It is definitely not the international norm.

The comments about consultants fees - I don't see why it would need many consultants to put a number on every county and electoral district.

I am not. Anyone competing with An Post will share the same problems until this infrastructural mess is sorted out.

They have the same problems, but they won't have the same solutions. A courier company doesn't have 'postal towns'.

What will a big long postcode do to solve this? Give each driver a Garmin Nuvi 660 GPS, which has every townland in Ireland and at least he can get to the required area in a systematic and fast way. If they assigned house numbers to each house in the townland, his job would be even easier - he wouldn't have to stop and make enquiries from the locals as to where a particular house is. Additionally, there is nothing to stop TNT's sorting system from printing the co-ordinates of each address on the package, as it passes through their hub. If he is stuck, he can type those co-ordinate numbers into the GPS and it will take him to the door. All these data is already in the geodirectory, accurate to 1 metre.

So it is necessary to pay An Post 80,000 euros a year just for the right to compete?

I only used the example of railway lines to try and convey the logic of how the numbers are allocated. You don't have to have railway lines to assign numbers to delivery offices in geographically logical order.

I thought you were assigning numbers to areas, and I thought you proposed to use the codes from the national dialling plan? What you are now proposing is a sort code to suit An Post's short-term needs. Why not just use the presort and postaim code that are in geodirectory already?

Have a look at the Comreg site - they produce a survey every now and again (using consultants) and the J+1 (next day delivery) single item delivery performance of an Post is usually around the mid 70%. This number is in the high 80s or mid 90s% in most other European countries. In Ireland if you look at An Post's delivery performance of machine generated mail (eg ESB bills and similar) there is very little problem because the computer printed addresses can be machine read with a high level of accuracy. This proves to me that the problem is not with postman not knowing their routes, or much of the other stuff you have brought up here. It is down to machine readability of handwritten addresses and the delays arising as a result.

.probe

None of this proves anything. Those aren't proper statistics to allow comparisons to be made across Europe. Stuff like ESB bills are only guaranteed to be delivered on the second day, not the next day, and are presorted in any case so they aren't that relevant. Are there actually any public statistics about the delivery times for these to allow a real comparison? You also haven't taken into account the effect of absenteeism.

You are mixing up speed and accuracy. Just because the machine gets a read on an envelope, it doesn't mean that it will code it correctly. A survey of next-day delivery times won't tell you all that much about overall accuracy. I'm sure there are internal An Post figures, but I don't know of any public survey of An Post's delivery accuracy.

There is little publicly available data, but anecdotally, I see a lot of problems with An Post's accuracy. My own experience (in an urban area) is that I to frequently received letters with printed addresses delivered to me that were addressed to completely different streets nearby. The mail appeared to have been sorted into the incorrect postman's box. Breastcheck complained that appointment letters sent to rural areas were occasionally delivered to addresses in the wrong county.

[lostexpectation]

any good makes of post or phone codes

perhaps one that breaks down to bouroughs(?)/phone area codes

[probe]

Originally Posted by antoinolachtnai

Mail is not sorted on the basis of grid references, is it? As I understand it, it is scanned to figure out the unique ID for the delivery point, and then each item is sorted into the relevant walk for that delivery point. There are grid references in there alright, but that's more because the data is derived from OSi maps, than having anything to do with sorting and delivery.

The "unique ID" allocated and barcoded on each envelope after scanning is just a serial number (like a DHL or UPS air waybill number). These ID numbers are part of the ISO 15459 standard. This standard covers not only the barcode on individual letters etc, but also the containers in which they are transported, RFID tags, and lots of other related matters. If you look at the post delivered to your home, every barcode on each envelope is different. If it was an ID that referred to your home or street or whatever - the barcode would always look the same. It is the same situation everywhere else on the Continent. My postcode has nothing to do with the barcode on each envelope. In addition, the barcode is printed on the envelope even if the address can't be machine recognised. It is an item identifier - a link to a database of items in transit.

If you look at the unique IDs allocated to buildings, streets, etc by An Post, they appear to be serial numbers. There is no geographical structure or logic to the numbering. For example, if a new building is put up between building ID 10002456 and 10002457, what building number do they assign to it? It matters less if it is a serial number, but if it is the basis on which mail is sorted, you will end up with a dogs dinner in sorting terms, as new constructions spring up. At least the NGR to 1 metre accuracy (which they use) could deal with the task of delivering mail to a new doghouse inserted between two terraced houses, if FIDO was into correspondence via An Post. A "postman's walk" is probably also defined in terms of grid reference boundaries - like a street - only it is probably a wider box than a narrow street in most cases.

If you are only sorting down to the postman's route (rather than to street and house number level), it is a simple mathematical operation to compute which delivery points are within the boundaries of the postman's route.

Mail sorting software is complex and has to be robust. The companies that make the kit (eg Siemens Dematic) won't find it economic to develop special software to for countries that want to create non-standard systems. They would have Health Service type software fiascos on their hands for every project! So it seems to me that they develop a single platform that works universally - ie one based on geographical co-ordinates. This approach will work equally well for the "Sahara Desert Postal Agency" or someone delivering mail in Paris. It is down to the mathematics of a straight line and points along the line or a curved line or a "box". If a new construction pops up and it is simply a new point along the line or within the box in the scheme of things.

Logistics is about universality. You can't impose an "Irish solution" on the rest of the world. In the aviation industry, Dublin airport has an IATA code of DUB for reservations and ticketing systems, an ICAO code of EIDW (dumb American origin - the ISO2 code for Ireland is IE not EI), and 53 25'24" x 6 15'20" co-ordinates. The only really universal element is the co-ordinate reference, and this is what the flight management computer uses for navigation. Not dissimilar to the way that envelopes are "navigated" to the delivery point.

Re stability, Dublin 6 was definitely split during the period you mentioned. Adding new areas to the numbering system generally happened because of a change in delivery practice as I understand it. I heard that there was an adjustment made out around Quarryvale. I've also heard about adjustments up around Dublin 15. It is also hard to believe that a country can go through this degree of economic growth and social change and for a number of delivery offices not to be opened or closed and for routes not to be changed

So what? Everyone knows about Dublin 6 and 6W. Dublin 6W is really probably Dublin 26 in system terms. The changes are few and far between compared with what would be involved in maintaining a database of postcodes down to delivery point with about 1.8 million postcodes, and 600,000 more houses in the pipeline over the next 9 years!

Splits like Dublin 6 and 6W are also a product of bad planning in terms of allocating district numbers. If district numbering was laid out with potential growth in each area in mind, a district served by one DO at present might be allocated two or more district numbers today. When the time came to open a new delivery office to serve an expanded urban area, the codes would be well established and there would be no change from the users point of view. example: Let's assume Swords is Dublin 70 (ie 1070 SWORDS) and has only one postal district today, the opportunity could be taken to give people in Swords North perhaps 1071 and Swords West 1072 today. All three district numbers would be assigned to the same DO today. And when the time comes to open Swords West DO addresses remain unchanged. And if they never open a Swords West DO it doesn't matter.

Re long postcodes, you yourself have demonstrated the need for seven digits of code (or so) in many addresses.

I have not "demonstrated the need" for seven digits. I referred to the old German system which if replicated in Ireland would allow the existing Dublin district numbers to remain as they are. i.e. Dublin 4 would become 1000 DUBLIN 4 for all street addresses and all street addresses in the Dublin area would share the same 1000 postcode. That is very different from "demonstrating the need for seven digits". Functionally, there is no need for anything more than 4 digits.

The other purpose of postcodes is for small area statistics. The CSO says they need this to produce statistics about areas smaller than the county and that they cannot do this economically using current techniques.

Yes they can. The CSO have access to the Geodirectory. They can collect data to an accuracy of 1 M2 of land surface if they want to using this. If the CSO phone you up at random to find out how much pet food you buy or whether anyone in your house has been diagnosed with MRSA - they have several choices in terms of defining your geographic location.

1) They can use your postal district number (ie 4 or 5 digit postcode if/when it arrives). They can then produce statistics on how much MRSA has been found in Dublin 2, Dublin 4, Dublin 13, Cork 4, or 7107 Dromahair. These areas are far smaller than counties.

2) They can ask the interviewee for their full address, and with the postcode and about 4 more keystorkes pinpoint it to an individual house using rapid address matching via the geodirectory.

3) They can use the geographic telephone number they called. The footprint of the NDC + the first 3 digits of the local number is only a few km2 in most cases.

Anyway I have yet to see CSO statistical publications where the data supplied is granular even to postal district number! In most cases they use counties and urban boundaries.

If the CSO wants to impose a high resolution code for whatever reason on the country (hasn't happened anywhere on Continental Europe) let them write to each household and allocate them a "CSO code". They could fine everybody €3,000 if they don't know their CSO code - in keeping with the new Irish police state! But please don't let them warp any postcode system making it user-unfriendly and virtually useless for anyone else!



Finland Post Corp has taken advantage of this mail sorting technology to give postcodes / town names to major companies and organisation.

You can write FI 00045 NOKIA GROUP on an envelope and post it anywhere in the world and it will get to Nokia headquarters. Other Fin postcorp virtual company towns can be found here: http://www.posti.fi/svenska/transakt...ostnummer.html


A breath of fresh air, compared with the complicated, antiquated postcode structures being proposed for Ireland, often by people who are drawing huge salaries from the state and have never lived in a country with postcodes, clean tap water, an efficient waste recycling system that doesn't involve dumping everything in China - exporting valuable raw materials and energy for nothing, and wasting zillions of kW of energy in the process, or a public transport system that is intermodal, efficient and comfortable enough for everybody to use, so that it becomes the normal method of travel rather than the private car, as is the case in Ireland. As for electoral divisions, I see they were introduced under the Poor Laws! "District Electoral Divisions originated as subdivisions of Poor Law Unions, grouping a number of townlands together to elect one or more members to a Poor Law Board of Guardians. The boundaries of District Electoral Divisions were drawn by a Poor Law Boundary Commission, with the intention of producing areas of roughly equivalent rateable value (the total amount of rates that would be paid by all ratepayers in the DED) as well as population. This meant that while DEDs were almost always contiguous, they might bear little relation to natural community boundaries." http://www.answers.com/topic/distric...toral-division

What an antiquated country!

.probe

[probe]

Originally Posted by antoinolachtnai

What survey are they referring to? There are no citations there. n Post have their own statistics that put the next-day rate as being considerably higher than the ComReg figure. It depends what you measure.

I have no idea - but Aftenposten is a paper of record in Norway - they hardly made it up - particularly as it is somewhat critical of their postal administration. The way postal performance is measured across Europe is governed by a standard (EN 13850:2002).

An Post's figure does not comply with this standard.

.probe

[antoinolachtnai]

Originally Posted by probe

If you look at the unique IDs allocated to buildings, streets, etc by An Post, they appear to be serial numbers. There is no geographical structure or logic to the numbering. For example, if a new building is put up between building ID 10002456 and 10002457, what building number do they assign to it? It matters less if it is a serial number, but if it is the basis on which mail is sorted, you will end up with a dogs dinner in sorting terms, as new constructions spring up. At least the NGR to 1 metre accuracy (which they use) could deal with the task of delivering mail to a new doghouse inserted between two terraced houses, if FIDO was into correspondence via An Post. A "postman's walk" is probably also defined in terms of grid reference boundaries - like a street - only it is probably a wider box than a narrow street in most cases.

I wouldn't think they do it that way. It would be a lot easier to have a list of which thoroughfares and settlements were covered by each walk. (You can do this with a database join, rather than having to do geographical lookups, so it is less processor-intensive and it is also easier to maintain.) Streets and roads are a common feature of all human settBut maybe you are right.

If you are only sorting down to the postman's route (rather than to street and house number level), it is a simple mathematical operation to compute which delivery points are within the boundaries of the postman's route.

It would be easier to just have a list of thoroughfare and building group id's that pertain to each walk.

So what? Everyone knows about Dublin 6 and 6W. Dublin 6W is really probably Dublin 26 in system terms. The changes are few and far between compared with what would be involved in maintaining a database of postcodes down to delivery point with about 1.8 million postcodes, and 600,000 more houses in the pipeline over the next 9 years!

You are proposing to number every home in any case. This amounts to a project just as big. You still have to build a directory or register of addresses.

Splits like Dublin 6 and 6W are also a product of bad planning in terms of allocating district numbers. If district numbering was laid out with potential growth in each area in mind, a district served by one DO at present might be allocated two or more district numbers today.

The point is that you said these divisions are stable. They aren't. They were devised as zone codes to allow easier sorting, nothing more. I think you are being uncharitable to the people who devised it when you say that it was badly planned.

I have not "demonstrated the need" for seven digits. I referred to the old German system which if replicated in Ireland would allow the existing Dublin district numbers to remain as they are. i.e. Dublin 4 would become 1000 DUBLIN 4 for all street addresses and all street addresses in the Dublin area would share the same 1000 postcode. That is very different from "demonstrating the need for seven digits". Functionally, there is no need for anything more than 4 digits.

You suggested applying a 3-digit house number to all rural unnumbered houses . You suggested a 4-digit code for areas the size of dublin postal districts and rural NDCs. That makes seven digits in total.

Yes they can. The CSO have access to the Geodirectory. They can collect data to an accuracy of 1 M2 of land surface if they want to using this. If the CSO phone you up at random to find out how much pet food you buy or whether anyone in your house has been diagnosed with MRSA - they have several choices in terms of defining your geographic location.

Why don't they do that then? They claim it is not practical. From my experience, they are probably right. The geodirectory is just not that accurate. The addresses in it aren't legal addresses and many of them are not commonly used. And it takes a lot more than just a database to match an address.

1) They can use your postal district number (ie 4 or 5 digit postcode if/when it arrives). They can then produce statistics on how much MRSA has been found in Dublin 2, Dublin 4, Dublin 13, Cork 4, or 7107 Dromahair. These areas are far smaller than counties.

Your postcode would be bigger than an ED and EDs would not fit evenly with it. That would mean that it would be impossible to make comparisons between the inter-census survey and the census. Without solid population figures, it's impossible to do accurate parametric statistics.

Also, regions such as 'Dublin 7' are enormous and very heterogenous. The average income for an area the size of Dublin 7 is fairly meaningless.

2) They can ask the interviewee for their full address, and with the postcode and about 4 more keystorkes pinpoint it to an individual house using rapid address matching via the geodirectory.

that doesn't work at the moment, even within the Dublin area. It would be haphazard enough if you kept using the current postal divisions in Dublin, for example. There are a lot of streets with similar names.

3) They can use the geographic telephone number they called. The footprint of the NDC + the first 3 digits of the local number is only a few km2 in most cases.

Do you think the CSO haven't thought about this? Your assumption about the geographical distribution of phone numbers is not correct.

Anyway I have yet to see CSO statistical publications where the data supplied is granular even to postal district number! In most cases they use counties and urban boundaries.

That's because they can't produce anything more accurate with the current addressing. The fact that they can't is an enormous problem, and there is a significant project underway to resolve this. As I understand it, it is a requirement that this code integrates with the postcode.

They do produce census statistics by EDs. (This is basically a constitutional requirement.)

They could fine everybody €3,000 if they don't know their CSO code - in keeping with the new Irish police state!

As for electoral divisions, I see they were introduced under the Poor Laws! "District Electoral Divisions originated as subdivisions of Poor Law Unions, grouping a number of townlands together to elect one or more members to a Poor Law Board of Guardians. The boundaries of District Electoral Divisions were drawn by a Poor Law Boundary Commission, with the intention of producing areas of roughly equivalent rateable value (the total amount of rates that would be paid by all ratepayers in the DED) as well as population. This meant that while DEDs were almost always contiguous, they might bear little relation to natural community boundaries."
What an antiquated country!

EDs are the basis of public admistration in this country for over 150 years. They may not be perfect, but it would certainly be cheaper and easier to use these than to make up a new set of boundaries from scratch based on the workings of An Post, which won't bear any relation to community boundaries and will have to be constantly modified and updated.

I think it is time to draw a line under the postal delivery discussion. Postal delivery is not really all that important for the future. Postal volumes are already in decline, and the decline is going to become more acute. Other uses of the postcode are a bigger focus.

[probe]

Originally Posted by antoinolachtnai

I wouldn't think they do it that way. It would be a lot easier to have a list of which thoroughfares and settlements were covered by each walk. (You can do this with a database join, rather than having to do geographical lookups, so it is less processor-intensive and it is also easier to maintain.) Streets and roads are a common feature of all human settBut maybe you are right.
It would be easier to just have a list of thoroughfare and building group id's that pertain to each walk.

We are getting lost in technology irrelevancies here! Computer power is cheap in 2007. Sorting machines cost millions.
The big picture issues:

1) Labour is becoming more expensive everywhere, especially in Ireland. Dealing with items that aren't fully machine readable is very expensive in terms of labour cost and delays. Postal services everywhere are trying to optimise the machine readability of the mail they handle to get a grip on spiralling labour costs. Example, La Poste (post.be) is working on a web based address label generation service. Using this service, the customer will enter a postal address which will be machine verified for accuracy online using a web browser, and an address label with an item tracking barcode is printed out in the process. The address entered will be stored in the sorting system for a short period avoiding the need to scan the addresses on mail at all. They expect greater than 99% machine readability of all mail processed in this way.

An Post is bleeding financially and rural post offices are being closed all over the place - because there is no money to keep their nationwide infrastructure in place. Their resources are being soaked up in high wage bills dealing with labour intensive operations - the main one being sorting the mail.

2) Reducing delivery costs in all types of logistical services due to standardised, short, precise addressing, which complies with norms used in the rest of Europe to facilitate interchange of mail.

3) Keeping the postcode and address format as short, simple and geographically neutral as possible to make it more user friendly - thus facilitating maximum acceptance.

You are proposing to number every home in any case. This amounts to a project just as big. You still have to build a directory or register of addresses.

60% of houses already have numbers. You don't need a directory or register of addresses to use or benefit from house numbers. They are just there and have been for over a century. And there is space for building numbers in the geodirectory.

The point is that you said these divisions are stable. They aren't. They were devised as zone codes to allow easier sorting, nothing more. I think you are being uncharitable to the people who devised it when you say that it was badly planned.

I am not being uncharitable. Nobody seems to plan for anything in Ireland! Postal districts are one of the most stable elements in any country - far more stable than complex postcodes. If you have addresses with building numbers and postal zone postcodes, you can analyse data sets to any level of detail you require down to 1 M2 of land area.

You suggested applying a 3-digit house number to all rural unnumbered houses . You suggested a 4-digit code for areas the size of dublin postal districts and rural NDCs. That makes seven digits in total.

A house number is not a postcode. You are confusing very distinct elements in the postal address structure. Unfortunately you are not alone.

Why don't they do that then? They claim it is not practical. From my experience, they are probably right. The geodirectory is just not that accurate. The addresses in it aren't legal addresses and many of them are not commonly used. And it takes a lot more than just a database to match an address.

If you want to write "in the County of Wexford" in a summons or other legal document there is nothing stopping you. That doesn't make it necessary to appear on every envelope going through a logistics system for proper and efficient delivery. If there are inaccuracies or out of date items in the geodirectory, they should be corrected. As I pointed out earlier in this thread, An Post must have a version of the Geodirectory on their sorting system that is up to date - otherwise they couldn't sort the mail. Who knows, it may even be malicious intent by some people in An Post to keep the published version of the very expensive geodirectory out of date to make life difficult for their "competitors"?

Your postcode would be bigger than an ED and EDs would not fit evenly with it. That would mean that it would be impossible to make comparisons between the inter-census survey and the census. Without solid population figures, it's impossible to do accurate parametric statistics.

ED's are nothing more than artificial, antiquated boundaries based on "rateable valuations" for the Poor Laws! But if you are so hung up on them they are in the geodirectory so there is no problem matching datasets to them - providing you have the correct house number and postal zone code for each address.

Also, regions such as 'Dublin 7' are enormous and very heterogenous. The average income for an area the size of Dublin 7 is fairly meaningless.

This is getting boring. I won't repeat myself again!

that doesn't work at the moment, even within the Dublin area. It would be haphazard enough if you kept using the current postal divisions in Dublin, for example. There are a lot of streets with similar names.

So what? There are lots of Bahnhofstrasse's in Germany, and it doesn't cause a problem.
Every town name in France has been made unique by making slight changes to the original name in cases where there was duplication. eg

AIX EN PROVENCE
AIX EN ISSART
AIX NOULETTE

In the very isolated cases where you have duplication of street names in a postal district, you should amend them - eg Main Street North, Main Street South.
Postcodes have no role in correcting street name ambiguities. If you cut your finger, you put a bandage on the finger - not on your leg!

Do you think the CSO haven't thought about this? Your assumption about the geographical distribution of phone numbers is not correct.

Every country in Europe has statistical agencies. I don't hear any of them crying for more complex postcode systems so they can do their work!

Complex (ie "granular postcodes") seems to me to be yet another Irish re-invent the wheel exercise that will cost a fortune to implement, take years to achieve, and will end up a total mess. The best things in life are those that are kept simple - especially for the end-user.

.probe

[antoinolachtnai]

1. It's the same size project to give unique addresses whether you put the number at the start or the end of the address.

2. Postcodes (for example the German postcode) do change every year. For example, the US system changes around 1 or 2 percent every year because of changes in mail sorting practice (which are mostly driven by demographic change, not bad planning). As a result, after 10 years, over 10 percent of homes have changed postcode. You cannot expect postal sorting areas to be stable.

I think it is a good idea for postcodes to be stable, as do you. That is why I suggest not using postal sorting divisions.

3 EDs are the basis of public administration in this country for over 150 years and are stable in a way that postal districts are not and will never be. ED information has to be updated and maintained for constitutional reasons so there is no extra expense in maintaining them. There are published maps of EDs in existence. There are no published maps of an Post's proprietary sorting areas, and these maps would have to be produced and frequently updated at significant expense.

The La Poste system you describe is a complicated administrative solution to a simple problem. It might have a benefit in some circumstances but it's hard to see it being cost-effective. Royal Mail has a much simpler solution (and has had it for years). http://www.royalmail.com/portal/rm/c...diaId=15500215 . US mail has something similar - http://www.idautomation.com/usps-barcode-faq.html

[antoinolachtnai]

Regarding the problems of An Post, the company is definitely in a lot of trouble. The company really nees to innovate quickly, but it is hard to see how it can do so with the current IR situation. For example, if An Post really does have such a problem with scanning mail (which is in dispute) it could solve this problem within weeks by outsourcing manual mail coding to eastern Europe or India.

I think there is a way out of this, but improving mail sorting of regular mail is just a part of it and not the most important part. The big operational problem with mail delivery is at the delivery end - the company is too dependent on a small pool of skilled operatives -.

The big strategic problem with mail is that it is a dying business. By 2020, there won't be much old-fashioned mail at all. Really, An Post needs to be looking at rapidly developing the new businesses rather than trying to streamline the old ones.