National Postcodes to be introduced

Red Nissan

Impetus wrote: »

So what: .

This is a deliberately obtuse comment.

ukoda

recedite wrote: »

Sign in to the website etenders.gov.ie and look under the documents (Clarifications)with this RFT:
RFT17007 - JAN194659 - Appointment of a Postcode Management Licence Holder


The breach of EU law is that any Irish indigenous SME's applying through the official channel etenders were specifically told that the individual candidate must have a turnover of €40 Million, not the consortium total turnover.
The EU law says that several SME's are allowed to come together as a consortium to reach the required turnover, even if none of them have that turnover individually.

The breach of the (separate) Irish Govt guidelines you are alluding to, and which I linked to earlier is that the turnover figure should also be proportional/appropriate to the job being tendered for.

In the Dail Public Accounts Committee report on this last month Eamon Molloy (Ass Sec Dept of Comms) told PAC that design of Eircode cost €1.9 million, as invoiced by Capita. Whereas Gary Delaney of Loc8 apparently offered his design for free. Either way, €40 million turnover is excessive for this job.

EU Best partice and Finance Circular 10/10 suggest breaking of contracts into smaller lots to facilitate SME participation (This is how the French keep contracts for French companies).
Loc8 Code would have been ideally suited to compete in a postcode design contract worth €2 million.

As for the implementation costs, these should never have all been included in the one contract. Of the €25 Million that Capita are charging the taxpayer, €8.27M is going in fees to Geodirectory. But this cost is specific to their eircode design; loc8 code does not require access to an external database to work. This is because the code contains the location information within it, and is not simply a random look-up reference number as eircode is.

Another €9.46M (these figures from Dail PAC) for upgrading the databases of various govt. departments. Why don't they do this themselves, or just put out a contract to employ data entry sub-contractors afterwards? Its not relevant for the design.
What we are interested in here is to get a good design which also has minimal maintenance costs.

is it a law or a suggestion? because at the start you say EU law, and later on you say EU best practice

I stand by:
No EU law was broken
and No Irish guidelines were broken (you just disagree with the aspect of "proportional turnover" used)

Just to clarify my position, i think Loc8 code is a great idea! i just think the company has failed to make it into something that could have been amazing. the strategy (or lack of) behind it has left it pretty much useless to the average person.

They've had 6 years to make this something great, theres so much they could have done with it and in 6 years it could have really caught on and been everywhere, instead its like the smartest kid in the class who sits down the back and does nothing!

i think its a huge lost opportunity for them, their strategy and lack of vision let them down and now they are pretty screwed i reckon

Red Nissan

ukoda wrote: »

i think its a huge lost opportunity for them, their strategy and lack of vision let them down and now they are pretty screwed i reckon

I'd put it into the CT category myself and say a stolen opportunity, we were to have had post codes six years ago too.


PS, it was €40 for a Loc8 many years ago, then it was free.

a65b2cd

Nothing is simple - here is a review of the rural addressing project in South Australia:

... In 2003, one of the recommendations to cabinet from the South Australian Premier's Bushfire Summit was to endorse the development of a standard property addressing system for rural properties across the state. This was formally endorsed by cabinet, and was a direct response to the fact that essential services such as ambulance, medical and social care were hindered in providing services to the residents of Eyre Peninsula during and after the bushfires.

Overall, this was not a controversial decision, nor was it a huge implementation challenge, yet it took 9 YEARS to come into effect...

Simple things usually take a long time. I expect it would take as long to get every address to register their LOC8/TICODE or to name/number every road/house in Ireland.

Is the Irish branch of the Freight Transport Association setting the policy on Eircodes or their UK parent? I expect the Value Added Resellers will make it profitable for truck drivers to use but will they pass the savings on to compensate for the road and environmental damage they are subsidised for causing.

recedite

ukoda wrote: »

is it a law or a suggestion? because at the start you say EU law, and later on you say EU best practice

I stand by:
No EU law was broken
and No Irish guidelines were broken..

I have explained clearly in the last few pages how both were broken, but to summarise;

The aspect of not breaking up contracts into constituent parts to allow the State to benefit from the expertise of SME's was a breach of EU "best practice" but not EU law.

The aspect of preventing SME's from submitting a tender through the official channel where no individual candidate in the possible consortium had a turnover exceeding €40M was in breach of an EU Directive, which is EU law.

The very high turnover figure in relation to the actual design costs was also a breach of Irish Dept. of Finance circular 10/10 guidelines.

recedite

I see that The Journal.ie business section has now picked up on the tender shenanigans;

The EU Commission, despite finding a breach on the part of the Irish state, claims it is barred from launching an “infringement procedure” itself, and has suggested to Delaney that he request a review of the tender within Ireland.

But the legal costs of fighting against the State would of course preclude that as an effective remedy for any indigenous SME.
If they mean political lobbying, that can also require a lot of cash in this dear little country.

SpaceTime

recedite wrote: »

Obviously no code is going to be universally adopted until the government adopts it as the official national code. Even if eircode is rolled out by govt. it looks like Loc8 is going to persist as an unofficial rival because of its greater usefulness to hauliers, the emergency services and others.

The 999 app would be very useful in the event that the person did not know their location, yes. That has nothing to do with this topic though.
A location code would help an ambulance to quickly locate a person phoning from their home on a landline. People would quickly get to know their own code.

Iceland has a 112 app which they highly recommend you download when you're visiting as the population's so small (330,000) in an area the size of Ireland so a lot of places are pretty remote.

Basically, if you're off the beaten track you can use the app to manually 'check in' with the 112 centre so it logs where you were last. It's kinda handy if you don't show up the following day as they at least know where you were.

You can also call the services via the app and it sends your GPS location and avoids all the issues with dealing with languages etc.

It also works with just GPS and SMS so you don't even need a data connection.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=is.stokkur.savage.android&hl=en

ukoda

recedite wrote: »

Obviously no code is going to be universally adopted until the government adopts it as the official national code. Even if eircode is rolled out by govt. it looks like Loc8 is going to persist as an unofficial rival because of its greater usefulness to hauliers, the emergency services and others.

The 999 app would be very useful in the event that the person did not know their location, yes. That has nothing to do with this topic though.
A location code would help an ambulance to quickly locate a person phoning from their home on a landline. People would quickly get to know their own code.

an eircode will do this too, you made the point that loc8 was useful for emergency services and linked an article to show how "life saving" it could be, but a loc8 code is also absolutely useless for emergency responses in locations the caller doesnt know, what are people to do? log on to their website (assuming an internet connection) and go through the process of identifying their code for their location and then call the emergency services? thats totally impractical


im afraid no one will use loc8 code once the eircode is rolled out, i can't see how it can survive as a rival to be honest

ukoda

recedite wrote: »

I have explained clearly in the last few pages how both were broken, but to summarise;

The aspect of not breaking up contracts into constituent parts to allow the State to benefit from the expertise of SME's was a breach of EU "best practice" but not EU law.

The aspect of preventing SME's from submitting a tender through the official channel where no individual candidate in the possible consortium had a turnover exceeding €40M was in breach of an EU Directive, which is EU law.

The very high turnover figure in relation to the actual design costs was also a breach of Irish Dept. of Finance circular 10/10 guidelines.

the EU seem to be specifically talking about the PQQ here, i think theres a lot of misinformation and sensationalist conclusions being drawn here.

larchill

a65b2cd wrote: »

Nothing is simple - here is a review of the rural addressing project in South Australia:

... In 2003, one of the recommendations to cabinet from the South Australian Premier's Bushfire Summit was to endorse the development of a standard property addressing system for rural properties across the state. This was formally endorsed by cabinet, and was a direct response to the fact that essential services such as ambulance, medical and social care were hindered in providing services to the residents of Eyre Peninsula during and after the bushfires.

Overall, this was not a controversial decision, nor was it a huge implementation challenge, yet it took 9 YEARS to come into effect...

Simple things usually take a long time. I expect it would take as long to get every address to register their LOC8/TICODE or to name/number every road/house in Ireland.

Is the Irish branch of the Freight Transport Association setting the policy on Eircodes or their UK parent? I expect the Value Added Resellers will make it profitable for truck drivers to use but will they pass the savings on to compensate for the road and environmental damage they are subsidised for causing.

Ah ha! So even the Aussies had issues with this! With our rabbit warren of local roads it'd surely take 50 years. All (or @ least some of) the road name signs would end up swiped or hit by hedge cutters or some other agricultural implement. Some of the LXXXX signs have already gone this way Someone sitting @ a computer running an eircode assigning application will work best!

larchill

SpaceTime wrote: »

Iceland has a 112 app which they highly recommend you download when you're visiting as the population's so small (330,000) in an area the size of Ireland so a lot of places are pretty remote.

Ireland is 103,000km, we're smaller @ 70,273km. I was there recently - its a vast place.

SpaceTime

larchill wrote: »

Ireland is 103,000km, we're smaller @ 70,273km. I was there recently - its a vast place.

I was up the a few weeks ago myself. It's an interesting place and actually kind of looks like an extreme version of the West of Ireland at least in Western Coastal areas.

Ireland (speaking of the geographical landmass as opposed to the state) has got approx. 6.4m people in about 85,000 sq km size wise its like Ireland with an extra County the size of Cork. It's approximately the same size as Ireland just with the population of two County Donegals in total. There are nearly twice as many Corkonians as Icelanders!

Ireland's rural addressing system is very strange though. They've signs up with maps detailing everyone's house and all the little twisty roads ... Postal codes are only 3 digits long.

Signs : http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3c/Icelandic-Road-Sign.png

Sam Russell

Interesting. How does data protection work when there is a map dtailing where everyone lives, available for anyone to use?

SpaceTime

They're house / farm names. Iceland doesn't really have a familial names. You're just called like Paddy Seansson if your dad was Sean. Or Björk Guðmundsdóttir as she's Guðmund's daughter.

So they name their homes or stick up their first name only.

Some signs are just maps of first names! Officially that's what you're called they don't have the Mr / Mrs thing you're just your first name.
It's like an official version of how they do things in some Gaeltacht and other rural areas here in Ireland.

I guess they just don't see it as any kind of data protection issue.

TheBustedFlush

ukoda wrote: »

the EU seem to be specifically talking about the PQQ here, i think theres a lot of misinformation and sensationalist conclusions being drawn here.

It would appear from reading that PQQ that members of a consortium did not necessarily have to meet the €40m turnover level. Or possibly that a group of companies could have put together a consortium where they did not have to meet the €40m requirement. Or possibly only one of the companies needed to meet the €40m requirement.

larchill

SpaceTime wrote: »

They're house / farm names. Iceland doesn't really have a familial names. You're just called like Paddy Seansson if your dad was Sean. Or Björk Guðmundsdóttir as she's Guðmund's daughter.

So they name their homes or stick up their first name only.

Some signs are just maps of first names! Officially that's what you're called they don't have the Mr / Mrs thing you're just your first name.
It's like an official version of how they do things in some Gaeltacht and other rural areas here in Ireland.

I guess they just don't see it as any kind of data protection issue.

Ah I suppose when you've only 320,000 people ...

recedite

TheBustedFlush wrote: »

It would appear from reading that PQQ that members of a consortium did not necessarily have to meet the €40m turnover level. Or possibly that a group of companies could have put together a consortium where they did not have to meet the €40m requirement. Or possibly......

What part of NO do you not understand?

TheBustedFlush

recedite wrote: »

What part of NO do you not understand?

I understand the word No perfectly.

What are you applying it to? I gave my view from reading the document.

recedite

TheBustedFlush wrote: »

What are you applying it to?

Its not me applying it. The word "NO" is the answer given to the specific question by etenders, the official state agent for procurement of public contracts.

Your attempts to re-interpret NO as "possibly" or "it would appear that" are pointless at this stage.

The EU commission lawyers have already declared this "NO" to be a breach, and demanded reforms in the way all future state contracts are dealt with, even if they do not intend to prosecute the State at this time.

TheBustedFlush

recedite wrote: »

Its not me applying it. The word "NO" is the answer given to the specific question by etenders, the official state agent for procurement of public contracts.

Your attempts to re-interpret NO as "possibly" or "it would appear that" are pointless at this stage.

The EU commission lawyers have already declared this "NO" to be a breach, and demanded reforms in the way all future state contracts are dealt with, even if they do not intend to prosecute the State at this time.

Here's what you posted earlier as an apparent quote from etenders:

Question 12:
In Section 6 of PQQ “Evaluation of PQQ Responses .. Financial and Economic Standing”, can you clarify - does this mean that at least one member of a consortium must have turnover greater than €40million?

Answer 12:
As indicated in the PQQ this requirement refers to each candidate or candidate member using as a basis the definitions for candidate and candidate member as contained in the PQQ.


Question 13: In Section 6 of PQQ “Evaluation of PQQ Responses .. Financial and Economic Standing”, is it acceptable that the combined turnover of members of a consortium is greater than €40 million?

Answer 13: No

a65b2cd

The PQQ document is available on the DCENR website entitled: Pre-Qualification Questionnaire (PQQ) for the appointment of a Postcode Management Licence Holder (PMLH)

... The annual turnover of the Candidate or Candidate Member as presented in the most recent years audited accounts is less than €40 million which is estimated to be a multiple of the cost to provide the service in year 1 by a factor of 3 – 5.

... A Candidate Member is a member of a consortium, joint venture or a key subcontractor (defined as one that would deliver greater than 25% of the estimated cost of the service).

Conclusion: You can be a member of a consortium without having an annual turnover of €40 million provided you are not delivering more than 25% of the cost of the service.

recedite

EU Commission reached a different conclusion; a breach of rules to favour one company or type of company over another is corrupt and the legal brains of the procurement unit in Brussels have found a breach after 18 months of investigation.
In repeated questioning in the Dail on this subject Rabbitte never admitted that a breach happened even though he knew.

TheBustedFlush

recedite wrote: »

EU Commission reached a different conclusion; a breach of rules to favour one company or type of company over another is corrupt and the legal brains of the procurement unit in Brussels have found a breach after 18 months of investigation.

Reading the PQQ, small companies/SMEs who were each only providing less than 25% costs of the first year were not prevented putting together a consortium to tender if they had submitted on that basis.

Impetus

recedite wrote: »

Obviously no code is going to be universally adopted until the government adopts it as the official national code. Even if eircode is rolled out by govt. it looks like Loc8 is going to persist as an unofficial rival because of its greater usefulness to hauliers, the emergency services and others.

Please get real. How many people even know their loc8 code? Or can remember it during a medical emergency or house break in or fire etc? What planet do you live on? I suspect most people whose house is on fire etc, (ie 112 callers) will know their street/road name and house number and the town. From which can be derived the postcode, which is a icing on the cake in such cases.

recedite wrote: »

The 999 app would be very useful in the event that the person did not know their location, yes. That has nothing to do with this topic though.
A location code would help an ambulance to quickly locate a person phoning from their home on a landline. People would quickly get to know their own code.

The emergency services number across Europe is 112, not 999. If you enter 999 on a phone in Ireland it diverts to 112 While I have no problem with telcos diverting traffic addressed to 999 by old farts like you to 112, I do have a problem with Eircom and Comreg's dual 999/112 policy. It leads to confusion and lack of clarity. Try calling 999 in any continental country - it doesn't work. Use 112 and one gets connected. 999 must be eliminated from the Irish mindset, and universally replaced with 112. This doesn't mean that 999 is does not continue to be diverted to the emergency services answering centre, ad-infinitum. If you are familiar with 112 in Ireland and your ID card/passport gets stolen in Portugal, calling 112 would become natural. If the code was promoted as the sole code for this service.

recedite wrote: »

The 999 app would be very useful in the event that the person did not know their location, yes. That has nothing to do with this topic though.

A location code would help an ambulance to quickly locate a person phoning from their home on a landline. People would quickly get to know their own code.

One would assume that anyone calling from a landline to 112 services, the network already provide their lat/long co-ordinates and street/road address to emergency services. They don't need their loc8. Anyone who uses GPS for navigation knows that it isn't perfect. Most systems can occasionally send one down one street and up another road, etc when if you have local knowledge of the location, you might take a completely different route. Basically whether you are DHL or a cardio ambulance, you are looking for a house number on a road, which is why Eircode and loc8 etc are of limited use.

Impetus

Many postings on this thread are going down the tender/who gets the job street. From a priority point of view this is irrelevant, providing the basic design of the system is intelligent and the designated postcode management company is capable of doing the job.

They key issue is delivering a perfect "where do you live/work - where do we deliver" addressing system for Ireland. This issue is increasingly important with online shopping etc. Despite the advances of technology, people's houses and offices are located on streets or roads etc, and each building should have a unique number. This reality is unlikely to change. This is the norm in every developed country.

EVERY ADDRESS IN IRELAND MUST HAVE A STREET/ROAD NAME AND HOUSE / BUILDING NUMBER, AND TOWN NAME.

A postcode is an add-on. Without the street / road name etc one is pissing in the wind, if you will forgive the term. Any money spent on assigning a D4 R2TY type postcode to each household etc will end up in the same wet puddle of earth in the ground.

Impetus

Ireland has a universal, dysfunctional addressing problem, which extends beyond proper street/road addresses or postcodes. Awful street signs, totally at variance with the rest of the world*. Some 15% of road traffic accidents involve tourists, mainly because Ireland's screwed up way of signage and driving.

To report a broken street light one has to go to www.airtricitysolutions.com.

It seems to me that streetlights.ie and streetlighting.ie would be far more obvious and memorable to the "person in the street".

*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_European_road_signs

Sheldons Brain

Impetus wrote: »

. Some 15% of road traffic accidents involve tourists, mainly because Ireland's screwed up way of signage and driving.

Absolutely, tourists are especially confused by Ireland's screwed up habit of driving on the left.

Sheldons Brain

Sheldons Brain wrote: »

Absolutely, tourists are especially confused by Ireland's screwed up habit of driving on the left.

He was referring to the fact that some signs actually have the opposite meaning in just about every other country!

Thankfully, these signs are being phased out!

Impetus

Sheldons Brain wrote: »

Absolutely, tourists are especially confused by Ireland's screwed up habit of driving on the left.

I rented a car during a trip to IRL recently, and experienced difficulty trying to enter the name of the town, street etc on the centre console GPS touch screen, with one's left hand - was a painful experience. Most car controls are in the centre console which is easy for left hand drive cars.

Road traffic in Sweden used to be on the LHS until the 1960s. They then switched over to the driving on the right. On day one, the national speed limit was 40 km/h and they slowly increased it until people became used to driving on the right. Sweden now has one of the lowest accident rates in the world, in part as a result of the good signage they had to install and driving on the naturally correct side of the road. Most human beings are right handed. etc. It is totally dumb to go against the grain and drive on the wrong side of the road. Compound that with crap, non-standard, home made traffic signs, whose design vary from street to street, a la Irlande, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_European_road_signs) and one ends up with a recipe for confusion, accidents etc - which one might include in the same book, which laboriously directs one to the 50% of the houses that are difficult to find due to the absence of an road address and house number.

Impetus

Deleted User wrote: »

He was referring to the fact that some signs actually have the opposite meaning in just about every other country!

Thankfully, these signs are being phased out!

While one has seen some Geneva convention no entry signs (white barrier on a red circle) for no entry, we still have parking signs in Ireland with a white (rather than blue) background and a zilion other signs with a red circle (which internationally means prohibited) but in Ireland means allowed. eg red circle around a big "P".

In school, back in the day the teacher put a red circle around errors. Ireland still has red circles around all sorts of allowed turns for some dyslexic reason. And few signs indicating bendy roads ahead. And few no parking signs - they just draw a yellow line instead of putting up a sign saying / or X and the times prohibited.

Dyslexic, screwed up, third world government. A small island mentality which presumes everybody known where to go, which takes no account of the world we live in.