National Postcodes to be introduced

ukoda

Sam Russell wrote: »

It will be an overhead cost for business. If it works well, then it could save money - otherwise it is a dead cost. However, it will be an excuse for raising charges - which only vigorous competition will combat.

lets hope no business is stupid enough to blindly invest in eircode without doing a proper cost benefit analysis and working out how long it will take them to get a return on investment. theres no excuse to raise prices. none.

basic business stuff: Will eircode save us enough money to warrant an investment in it? Yes: then get it. No: then don't get it.

oscarBravo

Sam Russell wrote: »

It will be an overhead cost for business.

Do I recall that the maximum licensing fee is €3,000 per annum?

Nightline handle more than a million parcels per month. That's twelve million a year. The licensing cost for ECAD will add one fortieth of a cent to the cost of each parcel - and that's before you consider any potential savings from being able to accurately locate delivery destinations.

How, exactly, do you figure that it will increase costs?

Trouwe Ier

ukoda wrote: »

..... it certainly is common knowledge that Loc8 are the biggest and most vocal anti ericode campaigners. I'm not talking about this thread in particular, I'm talking TV, Twitter, anti eircode websites set up, Facebook, comments on every news article online, they are relentless. If they put half as much effort into their own marketing of loc8 as they have/are putting into their anti ericode campaign, then we'd probably all be using loc8 everywhere by now. But we are not, I've said this before, I've nothing against loc8 let them off to do what they want to do, I do feel however they have completely messed up on promoting and marketing loc8 in the last 5 years and have no one to blame but themselves. Their relentless eircode bashing is pretty sad to watch at this stage.

I agree 100%. Looking at the twitter feed it is depressing to see the almost obsessive and bitter diatribes that are typed out by the same few users multiple times daily.

If anyone has any evidence of any malpractice or illegality, they need to put up (the evidence) or shut up. I note that nobody has sought a judicial review of the process or any sort of injunction. If any suspicion of malpractice were to surface and there were legal proceedings, then counsel for the defence may be tempted to argue that the campaign of electronic diatribe was prejudicial. No matter what the subject, any campaign of repeated and frequent diatribe loses credibility as it becomes addictive for the purveyors and an irritant for everyone else UNLESS it can be shown to be well-founded.

I am not a member of Labour or any political party: in fact I am a lapsed democrat. Neither do I know anyone in DCENR or Capita or any of their associates. I have no shares in any company. I am merely a frustrated public servant who has to call to a lot of rural houses in the mid-west.

I've already said that we shouldn't knock Eircode till we've tried it, that the genie will be out of the bottle and that there will undoubtedly be issues.

Others have echoed similar sentiments but some people think we are all stooges. More fools them!

Many of us have also commented on the poor Eircode website and the North-Korean like secrecy of the project too.

Whatever the faults of Capita, whatever the shennanigans, whatever the flaws, the electronic behaviour on twitter and facebook, of those "belligerents" with connections to other previously-potential code providers makes me wonder if they would be professionally fit and proper to be entrusted with such an important project.

Allegations about Eircode costing lives and ministers misleading the national parliament are very serious.

The war is over.

Now to the future and here's what's happening next week.

Dáil Éireann on Wednesday 24th June.

10.45 a.m.

Communications Regulation (Postal Service) (Amendment) Bill 2015 - Order for Report, Report and Final Stages
(Department of Communications, Energy and Natural Resources)


Seanad Éireann Thursday 25th June

12.45 a.m. (presumably they meant "p.m")

Communications Regulation (Postal Services)(Amendment) Bill 2015 – Second Stage
(Department of Communications, Energy and Natural Resources)

Sam Russell

Quote:
Originally Posted by Sam Russell
It will be an overhead cost for business. If it works well, then it could save money - otherwise it is a dead cost. However, it will be an excuse for raising charges - which only vigorous competition will combat.

ukoda wrote: »

lets hope no business is stupid enough to blindly invest in eircode without doing a proper cost benefit analysis and working out how long it will take them to get a return on investment. theres no excuse to raise prices. none.

basic business stuff: Will eircode save us enough money to warrant an investment in it? Yes: then get it. No: then don't get it.

If you read what I said, you will see that I said it would be used as an excuse to raise prices - nothing about cost benefit analysis or other ROI babble. Small businesses in Ireland work on the basic principle - 'That'll be extra!'

a65b2cd

oscarBravo wrote: »

Do I recall that the maximum licensing fee is €3,000 per annum?

That may be for ECAF which will have the Eircode and the address. The ECAD file will have coordinates, aliases, small area codes, etc. and is probably around a multiple of 10 in price.

Presumably over time market forces will kick in and ECAF, ECAD, GeoDirectory, Loc8, GoCode, and the Value Added Resellers will all be competing with each other and creating niche markets. In some cases the ECAF plus the daily allowance of free look-ups may be enough to meet a business's needs.

Anyone know how many purchasers GeoDirectory has - I think it costs around €65,000?

Bayberry

Trouwe Ier wrote: »

If anyone has any evidence of any malpractice or illegality, they need to put up (the evidence) or shut up. I note that nobody has sought a judicial review of the process or any sort of injunction.

There weren't any allegations of malpractice and illegality, or calls for injunctions about e-voting either, but it was still eventually shelved after 10s of millions of taxpayer money were wasted.

ukoda

Ericode pricing is up on their website

https://www.eircode.ie/docs/default-source/Common/licencing-and-pricing-information-as-of-march-2015---published-v-1-0.pdf?sfvrsn=0

It's pretty complex and you'd wanna spend a bit of time working out what way to buy access, and companies can band together to buy a joint copy for a common purpose

oscarBravo

a65b2cd wrote: »

That may be for ECAF which will have the Eircode and the address. The ECAD file will have coordinates, aliases, small area codes, etc. and is probably around a multiple of 10 in price.

Fair enough - a quarter of a cent per parcel, so

Sam Russell

oscarBravo wrote: »

Do I recall that the maximum licensing fee is €3,000 per annum?

Nightline handle more than a million parcels per month. That's twelve million a year. The licensing cost for ECAD will add one fortieth of a cent to the cost of each parcel - and that's before you consider any potential savings from being able to accurately locate delivery destinations.

How, exactly, do you figure that it will increase costs?

No, the maximun fee is €25,000. The fee structure is a licence fee of €5,000 for starters and then from 5c per transaction. I think you need to recalculate.

I think small businesses will be adding their extras or not using it.

ukoda

Sam Russell wrote: »

No, the maximun fee is €25,000. The fee structure is a licence fee of €5,000 for starters and then from 5c per transaction. I think you need to recalculate.

I think small businesses will be adding their extras or not using it.

That 25k can be split between an unspecified number of companies if they use it for a common purpose, so say if 10 (or even 50) came together to buy a copy, works out pretty cheap then

And the licence fee is €500 - €1000 depending on your user type, it is not €5000

And it's not always 5c per transaction. It ranges from 0.01 to 0.05. The more you use the cheaper it gets per transaction

Bayberry

Sam Russell wrote: »

No, the maximun fee is €25,000. The fee structure is a licence fee of €5,000 for starters and then from 5c per transaction. I think you need to recalculate.

I think small businesses will be adding their extras or not using it.

That's for the ECAF - just postcodes to addresses, so you can use it for you mass mailings, but there are no geos in the ECAF, so it's no good for deliveries, etc.

ukoda

Bayberry wrote: »

That's for the ECAF - just postcodes to addresses, so you can use it for you mass mailings, but there are no geos in the ECAF, so it's no good for deliveries, etc.

No. You're wrong again. That pricing* is for ECAD. The ECAF is even cheaper.

Has anyone bothered to look at the actual pricing I posted a few posts back or is everyone just happy to make sh*t up.

*his figures are wrong btw. Look at my corrections in the post below it

Bayberry

ukoda wrote: »

No. You're wrong again. That pricing* is for ECAD. The ECAF is even cheaper.

Has anyone bothered to look at the actual pricing I posted a few posts back or is everyone just happy to make sh*t up.

That's a direct screenshot from the link that you posted above.

An identifiable grouping of organisations (e.g.
insurance brokers, car dealerships, franchises etc.) can
share a copy of the ECAF for a common purpose. The
fee is payable annually in advance.

Bayberry

ukoda wrote: »

That 25k can be split between an unspecified number of companies if they use it for a common purpose, so say if 10 (or even 50) came together to buy a copy, works out pretty cheap then

That's for the ECAF - just postcodes to addresses, so you can use it for you mass mailings, but there are no geos in the ECAF, so it's no good for deliveries, etc.

(This is the €25,000 post that I meant to reply to, not Sam Russells - my mistake)

ukoda

Bayberry wrote: »

That's a direct screenshot from the link that you posted above.

So it's not €5k for a licence it's €60 for a licence and it's not 5c a transaction.

If you want ECAF €60
If you want ECAD €500 or €1000

Both have transaction fees that go down the more you buy.

His 5k is confused with the 5k for 84 plus users of the ECAF

ukoda

Bayberry wrote: »

That's for the ECAF - just postcodes to addresses, so you can use it for you mass mailings, but there are no geos in the ECAF, so it's no good for deliveries, etc.

(This is the €25,000 post that I meant to reply to, not Sam Russells - my mistake)

You can also use it for address validation, which will be one of the biggest uses of eircode I can see

Bayberry

Sam Russell wrote: »

No, the maximun fee is €25,000. The fee structure is a licence fee of €5,000 for starters and then from 5c per transaction. I think you need to recalculate.

I think small businesses will be adding their extras or not using it.

The fee for access to ECAD "is charged on a Per User or Per Transaction basis". The maximum fee if you buy per-user licenses is €30,000 (more that 263 users). If you decide to pay per transaction, it'll cost about €30,000 for the first million queries, and a penny a query after that, but you might as well go for unlimited users at that point instead.

It's likely that your hardware costs for 260 users will exceed €30K for the first couple of years anyway.

Carawaystick

Trouwe Ier wrote: »

If anyone has any evidence of any malpractice or illegality, they need to put up (the evidence) or shut up. I note that nobody has sought a judicial review of the process or any sort of injunction.

...

Whatever the faults of Capita, whatever the shennanigans, whatever the flaws, the electronic behaviour on twitter and facebook, of those "belligerents" with connections to other previously-potential code providers makes me wonder if they would be professionally fit and proper to be entrusted with such an important project.

Here's some illegality. The law is being changed to allow the previously decided upon eircode scheme be deemed lawful

Here's some malpractice
Eircode said eircodes would be would be out in the Spring. THen this year, they said the summer. Yet the copyright date for the webpage, changed this year states 2014.


Lots of people with lots of flaws can outline flaws in other areas of life.
Alan Shatter wrote an article about simple good changes the govt should introduce for same sex marriage; but he broke the law releasing mick Wallace's private data
Mick W dodged tax and pension payments for his workers, but he has brought the penalty points issue to the public.

People are perfectly entitled to say this public/state idea is sh1te, wihtout having to be able to implement a better replacement.

Deedsie

Any word on when people will receive their eircodes? End of June?

ukoda

Carawaystick wrote: »

Here's some illegality. The law is being changed to allow the previously decided upon eircode scheme be deemed lawful

Here's some malpractice
Eircode said eircodes would be would be out in the Spring. THen this year, they said the summer. Yet the copyright date for the webpage, changed this year states 2014.


Lots of people with lots of flaws can outline flaws in other areas of life.
Alan Shatter wrote an article about simple good changes the govt should introduce for same sex marriage; but he broke the law releasing mick Wallace's private data
Mick W dodged tax and pension payments for his workers, but he has brought the penalty points issue to the public.

People are perfectly entitled to say this public/state idea is sh1te, wihtout having to be able to implement a better replacement.

Ah seriously!

We never had national postcodes in Ireland before so the relevant Act was amended to make reference to them and outline what is and isn't acceptable

Since when is it "malpractice" to delay a launch? Because nearly every company I can think of has had some sort of delay with either one of their products or services, it's not malpractice.

And the copyright date is the date the information was copyrighted, which was 2014 as we all know was when eircode was established.

You are clutching at straws there.

Anyone has the right to be against anything, you can choose not to like it, that's fine, I'll respect you've a different opinion. but don't make wild claims that are simply untrue.

ukoda

Deedsie wrote: »

Any word on when people will receive their eircodes? End of June?

We are being told it will launch on the 6th July with a website that you can go on to get your code straight away, over time you'll also get a letter with it on it.

That date is subject to an amendment to the communications act being passed in the Dáil, which seems likely now as its entering the final stretch.

Trouwe Ier

Carawaystick wrote: »

Here's some illegality. The law is being changed to allow the previously decided upon eircode scheme be deemed lawful

Even if there is "sharp practice" involved, I can't figure out how that is illegal.

What law are you alleging has been broken? Common Law? Statute Law? If the latter, can you quote me the relevant Act and Section so as to allow me make an informed judgement for myself? What are the penalties?

If you are so convinced that there has been illegality, have you reported it to the Gardaí? If not, why not? If you don't then aren't you just standing idly by?

Those who claim that laws have been broken and do nothing about it can hardly claim the high moral ground if they just mouth off about it.

recedite

ukoda wrote: »

We never had national postcodes in Ireland before so the relevant Act was amended to make reference to them and outline what is and isn't acceptable

Countries don't make laws to "outline" what is and isn't acceptable.
New laws make legal something that previously was illegal, or vice versa.

ukoda

recedite wrote: »

Countries don't make laws to "outline" what is and isn't acceptable.
New laws make legal something that previously was illegal, or vice versa.

Yeah, like I said, we never had postcodes before so we had no law covering their usage, now we do, how is this a bad thing???

Countries make laws for the sole purpose of outlining what is and isn't acceptable in society

recedite

You don't need a new law to introduce a postcode.
Eircode is not a postcode, its a reference number look-up to a database.
The DPC had valid concerns that the sale and misuse of this database would lead to breaches of the existing data protection law.
Hence this amendment to absolve eircode of any blame, in advance.

Trouwe Ier

recedite wrote: »

Countries don't make laws to "outline" what is and isn't acceptable.
New laws make legal something that previously was illegal, or vice versa.

Agree partially BUT

It was neither legal nor illegal to stop on a motorway in the 1970s because there were none in the republic.

It wasn't illegal to drive a vehicle without a valid NCT cert until the late 1990s because there was no such thing as an NCT.

The use of ecstasy wasn't illegal until it came along and showed its horrific effects.

Legislation evolves as circumstances change!

If someone can produce some evidence that a specified Section of a specified Act has been breached in the process then please do so. I might want to make a statement to the Gardaí myself.

recedite

Trouwe Ier wrote: »

It was neither legal nor illegal to stop on a motorway in the 1970s because there were none in the republic.

It wasn't illegal to drive a vehicle without a valid NCT cert until the late 1990s because there was no such thing as an NCT.

The use of ecstasy wasn't illegal until it came along and showed its horrific effects.

Incorrect, it was legal to stop on a motorway, as a public road, until it was made illegal. It was legal to drive without an NCT until it was made illegal (and even then the Gardai didn't enforce it for a long time).

If you want to make the comparison with ecstasy, this is the equivalent of an importer of ecstasy foreseeing what might happen, and getting the law changed so that the importer shall have no liability for the misuse of the new ecstasy drug.

ukoda

recedite wrote: »

You don't need a new law to introduce a postcode.
Eircode is not a postcode, its a reference number look-up to a database.
The DPC had valid concerns that the sale and misuse of this database would lead to breaches of the existing data protection law.
Hence this amendment to absolve eircode of any blame, in advance.

You do, as we have done to introduce numberous other things in state, we didn't have a communications act until it was needed and we didn't have an amendment to it until it was needed. Nothing bad in any of that.

And eircode was never going to be blamed if someone misused the data, is An Post blamed if someone misuses an address? No.

recedite

There are 3 separate issues here;
1. The postcode aspect. The first 3 digits of eircode, the routing code, is a crude postcode. No new laws needed for that.

2. The location code. It would be useful for the state to adopt one system. There are several systems out there which allow the user to generate a location code whenever they want one. Eircode will store the raw GPS co-ordinates of every dwelling in its database, rather than let the owners have any input. There will still be no single approved universal system available for identifying locations other than single point billing address letterbox of certain entities, whether that is a small cottage or an entire university campus.

3. The Database. It is perfectly acceptable for govt. departments to maintain databases on people. It is not acceptable to release the contents of such databases for private purposes. As Alan Shatter found out when he released info on Mick Wallace.
If govt. departments wished to record location info about people in a secure database, say for property tax, there would be no need for a new law. In the case of water charges, there might be a problem releasing it as Irish Water is not fully a part of the State apparatus, or there is some doubt about it. But Eircode's database will be for sale to anyone with the cash to buy it. And later it will probably be available illegally as a free download.

ukoda

recedite wrote: »

There are 3 separate issues here;
1. The postcode aspect. The first 3 digits of eircode, the routing code, is a crude postcode. No new laws needed for that.

2. The location code. It would be useful for the state to adopt one system. There are several systems out there which allow the user to generate a location code whenever they want one. Eircode will store the raw GPS co-ordinates of every dwelling in its database, rather than let the owners have any input. There will still be no single approved universal system available for identifying locations other than single point billing address letterbox of certain entities, whether that is a small cottage or an entire university campus.

3. The Database. It is perfectly acceptable for govt. departments to maintain databases on people. It is not acceptable to release the contents of such databases for private purposes. As Alan Shatter found out when he released info on Mick Wallace.
If govt. departments wished to record location info about people in a secure database, say for property tax, there would be no need for a new law. In the case of water charges, there might be a problem releasing it as Irish Water is not fully a part of the State apparatus, or there is some doubt about it. But Eircode's database will be for sale to anyone with the cash to buy it. And later it will probably be available illegally as a free download.

The government has access to the geo directory so for 70% of the country they already can (and I'm sure they have in some cases) encoded their databases with the geocodes of all those customers.

Any private company can currently record and store the geo location of any customer in their private database using geo directory or other tools. And loads do. You are talking complete rubbish with that theory.

The geo directory is pretty widely used so there are tonnes of private databases in existence with full customer details (name, address, phone number, geo code, bank details etc etc)

I had an account with 3 mobile last year and they validated my address from the geo directory at sign up, they then had my phone number, date of birth, address with geo's, bank details for direct debit and other info)

Irish Water can buy the geo directory right now and encode location data on 70% of customer. The exact same thing they will be able to do with eircode. Nothing new.