National Postcodes to be introduced

ardmacha · 02-09-2014 5:05pm

SpaceTime wrote: »

This whole thing is looking about as useful as the British telephone area codes where 01878 could be Northern Scotland and 01898 could be the SW of England.

probably less useful, the telephone codes are alphabetical at least (from the days of letter dialling 0UST).

larchill · 03-09-2014 2:03pm

Tow wrote: »

Yes we do, the are An Post's "Principal Post Towns", D6 is the largest with 80K addresses.

You must've got some further info from eircode so?

WeHaveToGoBack · 03-09-2014 2:16pm

antoinolachtnai wrote: »

There is a privacy issue in that in order to locate services near your home on a website (say you are looking for a local LIDL, or the nearest B+Q, or a quote for a delivery) you have to give a code which reveals your full address. Effectively this means that you cannot access these services anonymously.

You could use the only the first three digits, but it would give you very vague responses because the districts are very large.

This is a serious privacy disadvantage compared to the UK system where your code will only reveal what street you are on, or the US 5+4 where you have the option of doing one or the other.

These countries also benefit from much more structured addresses. eircode adds a largely unstructured code to an unstructured address. It is hard to see how this makes sense.

Exactly; and its not just being anonymous. By giving them your full Eircode, you're basically inviting junk mail into your home, as no doubt there will be some T&C that says if you give us your Eircode we can send you all the crap we want.

recedite · 03-09-2014 2:31pm

WeHaveToGoBack wrote: »

By giving them your full Eircode, you're basically inviting junk mail into your home, as no doubt there will be some T&C that says if you give us your Eircode we can send you all the crap we want.

Its almost as if some representative of the Irish Direct Marketing Association had designed and won the contract for the national postcode. Oh wait...

TheBustedFlush · 03-09-2014 4:50pm

recedite wrote: »

Its almost as if some representative of the Irish Direct Marketing Association had designed and won the contract for the national postcode. Oh wait...

Telling lies again, recedite?

You just can't help yourself, can you?

a65b2cd · 03-09-2014 10:50pm

Tow wrote: »

Yes we do, the are An Post's "Principal Post Towns", D6 is the largest with 80K addresses..

80,000 address points in Dublin 6? Where did you get that figure from?

Bray Head · 03-09-2014 11:53pm

I've been reading this thread for several months. This is my first post on the topic.

There are four types of critique of eircode on this thread. Irrelevant, bad, superficially good, and good. One by one.

Irrelevant Arguments
-We need more logical addresses instead.
Ireland's address system is indeed a mess. One could create a logical adress system and re-number houses and premises sensibly, name rural roads, etc. This would be hugely more expensive than introducing postcodes and would need the creation of large new quango to oversee compliance. I suspect it would meet with huge public resistance. People already have addresses they are familiar with (even if the overall system is bad) and would be reluctant to give them up.

Bad Arguments
-We don't need postcodes.
Both in formal design and informal use, Ireland's address system is terrible. We all have stories of three different John Murphys in the one townland. For multiple reasons, from encouraging entry to the delivery market to research on socio-economic performance by location, the creation of postcode data will be a huge leap. At an annual cost of around 0.001% of GDP it is hardly expensive either.

-Eircodes are too long.
I've seen people advocate four- or five-digit, number-only continental-style postal districts. These don't contain a huge amount of information and if you're going to the huge bother of creating postcodes from scratch you should make them long enough to contain a lot of information

-People won't remember their postcode.
People can remember their own mobile phone number and often many more. These contain a predictable three-digit start and then seven random numbers, just like the eircode. I can remember seven-digit alphanumeric postcodes from when I lived in the UK ten years ago (I can't in fact remember the house number).

-Satnavs won't have the memory
I think this argument has been demolished. Anyway appeals to technical limitations of memory and processing power are generally redundant very quickly given Moore's Law. I would never purchase an in-car satnav myself. The smartphone does the same job, the only drawback is the very rare loss of coverage and data roaming costs abroad, but these are falling too

Superficially good
-Eircodes aren't sequential and therefore won't aid deliveries.
I live near a road with about 50 houses built evenly enough over 50 years haphazardly along the road. There is no sequential postcode system that would have been robust enough to these changes. Even suburban housing estates get infill construction after a while. A random system is probably no worse than an irregularly sequential one. In any case most delivery drivers will be hopping from place to place with a route punched out for them by a computer. Sequential postcodes are irrelevant in this case.

-Loc8 would have been a better alternative
Loc8 does indeed to be a cleverly designed system to compress a hard-to-remember location into an easy-to-remember code. But it does not seem to give quite enough precision to give it an advantage over eircode. The centre of my next-door neighbour's front door is 1.5 metres from mine. From what I read this is not reliably different enough in the Loc8 system. As such the Loc8 code provides no informational advantage over eircode. It also makes sense for anyone maintaining a database for the all the postcodes to relate to a unique premises or dwelling. Loc8 would mean that some (but not all) would be the same.
Eircode also allows for some degree of postcode portability (although I am not sure if this is part of the spec). A firm moving to a new location in the same general area might be able to keep its postcode, not with Loc8.

Good
-The retention of Dublin postal districts is wrong.
I agree. On the plus side it will improve buy-in for the maybe 20% of households in Ireland that have a Dublin postcode already. On the other hand it wastes a huge amount of storage information, ie the whole second digit. Dublin could easily be split into D01 to D99 which would provide much more granularity.

-The first four digits should represent the general area with the final three private to identify a dwelling or premises
I tend to agree with this. These areas could potentially tie in with the CSO's small areas. There are times when you might want to divulge your general area but not your precise location and keeping the final digits three characters private would aid this. Seven digits with a selection of 25 alphanumeric characters would allow for it. That said, it's the kind of feature that the vast majority of people would neither know nor care about.

Finally, I think it would be a good idea if eircode reserves memorable codes for high-volume addresses like the passport office, bank processing centres. This would probably minimise the risk of data entry error.

Impetus · 04-09-2014 8:41am

Bray Head wrote: »

I've been reading this thread for several months. This is my first post on the topic.

There are four types of critique of eircode on this thread. Irrelevant, bad, superficially good, and good. One by one.

Irrelevant Arguments
-We need more logical addresses instead.
Ireland's address system is indeed a mess. One could create a logical adress system and re-number houses and premises sensibly, name rural roads, etc. This would be hugely more expensive than introducing postcodes and would need the creation of large new quango to oversee compliance. I suspect it would meet with huge public resistance. People already have addresses they are familiar with (even if the overall system is bad) and would be reluctant to give them up.

This is the most fundamental issue in identifying each building and making it accessible. Every other country in Europe has done this. Nobody has suggested that one re-number houses. Rural roads can be named by using the townland name and using a suffix of perhaps 1,2, 3 etc. It is not imposing a new road name on a townland address to call what was Ballytownlandx Ballytownlandx Road. If there are two of them, the second becomes Ballytownlandx Road 2.

This is no more expensive (starting off with the National Geodirectory database) and assigning a code which is an “encrypted”, compressed derivative of the grid reference – which is will create a meaningless, complex, likely to contain typos, un-memorable, dumb, re-invent the wheel, not compatible with anywhere else, “code system”.

Why would it create public resistance for rural householders to have a proper road address like most urban dwellers already have? Basically it would remove their location from the third world of postal addressing – and help make the entire country a more level playing field from a communications perspective. I suspect that people and businesses in rural areas are sick of having to give directions to their premises to visitors and delivery drivers.

There is no need to “oversee compliance” to somebody using their road name and house number. No compliance supervisory authority is necessary in urban areas – it is just taken as a given. People can chose to comply. If I was delivering goods from my company, I would probably charge an extra delivery fee if the customer did not provide a road address and house number to recover the additional costs of playing hide and seek. Either you want the widget / service to be delivered (or your social visitors to visit) in the least friction way possible or you don’t. You, Mr/Ms householder decide. People like you, assuming you live in a rural area with no address (and I wonder if you do) would be free to continue to use your old Ballytownlandx “address” and keep your head in the sand.

In the WEF World Competitiveness rankings 2014, released today, Ireland ranks 36 for quality of infrastructure, compared with a ranking of 25 overall.
http://www3.weforum.org/docs/GCR2014-15/GCI_Dataset_2014-15.xlsx

One could go on, in relation to the matters outlined in your rather long, judgmentally arrogant posting, but I think this posting which just applies to your first point is long enough.

Tow · 04-09-2014 9:04am

a65b2cd wrote: »

80,000 address points in Dublin 6? Where did you get that figure from?

Someone else posted it.. Should have checked my self:

Here are An Posts figures for junk mail drops: http://www.anpost.ie/AnPost/AnPostDM/ProductsAndServices/Publicity+Post/DublinDeliveryZones/Dublin+Delivery+Zones.htm

fricatus · 04-09-2014 9:47am

Bray Head wrote: »

-The first four digits should represent the general area with the final three private to identify a dwelling or premises
I tend to agree with this. These areas could potentially tie in with the CSO's small areas. There are times when you might want to divulge your general area but not your precise location and keeping the final digits three characters private would aid this. Seven digits with a selection of 25 alphanumeric characters would allow for it. That said, it's the kind of feature that the vast majority of people would neither know nor care about.

This should be part of the design and could easily be achieved. Taking the sample postcode from Eircode's site (A65 F4E2), the A65 bit already identifies a larger area like a Dublin postcode. If the F4 bit identified a smaller area within that, and the E2 bit was random, then the code would be useful for the collection of statistics, quoting for delivery times, insurance ratings, etc., while allaying any privacy concerns there were.

It's incredible that this feature seems to be excluded at the design stage!

Impetus · 04-09-2014 11:01am

Tow wrote: »

Someone else posted it.. Should have checked my self:

Here are An Posts figures for junk mail drops: http://www.anpost.ie/AnPost/AnPostDM/ProductsAndServices/Publicity+Post/DublinDeliveryZones/Dublin+Delivery+Zones.htm

A postcode based on the existing un-addressed publicity post mail sub-groupings makes more sense:
Eg Dublin 4:

Ringsend, Irishtown 141

Merrion, Sandymount 142

Donnybrook 143

Ballsbridge, Beggars Bush 144

Add an extra digit or two to provide for large users of the post and addresses with a po box

Street addresses in Ballsbridge, Beggars Bush 1440 or 14400

Eg Large users in Ballsbridge / Beggars Bush 1441 or 14401

Individual extra large companies (eg Bankcentre) 1442 or 14402

The building identifier part of the code can be hidden from the ordinary user.

Companies and organisations that require the database can have access to the building number which might be 8 digits.

Database users can enter the 4 or 5 digit post code first, followed by the first character or two of the road name and the house number to auto-fill the entire address. This would be far more user-friendly and less prone to errors, and in line with international best practice.

Similar use of this code outline could be made in the rest of the country – though the overflow codes in some cities (eg 25A) would have to be giving a distinct number – rather than being an alpha character afterthought.

http://www.anpost.ie/AnPost/AnPostDM/ProductsAndServices/Publicity+Post/ProvincialDeliveryZones/Provincial+Delivery+Zones.htm#cork

larchill · 04-09-2014 11:23am

Tow wrote: »

Someone else posted it.. Should have checked my self:

Here are An Posts figures for junk mail drops: http://www.anpost.ie/AnPost/AnPostDM/ProductsAndServices/Publicity+Post/DublinDeliveryZones/Dublin+Delivery+Zones.htm

Notice the Delivery Area here, Dublin postal areas are subdivided: D1.1, D1.2, D1.3 etc. Also outside of the D1 - D24 areas the rest of Dublin is also coded: BN1, BN2 for Balbriggan, LK1 for Lusk, ME1 & ME2 for Malahide, etc! Maybe these will be the 1st part of eircode!

Impetus · 04-09-2014 11:30am

larchill wrote: »

Notice the Delivery Area here, Dublin postal areas are subdivided: D1.1, D1.2, D1.3 etc. Also outside of the D1 - D24 areas the rest of Dublin is also coded: BN1, BN2 for Balbriggan, LK1 for Lusk, ME1 & ME2 for Malahide, etc! Maybe these will be the 1st part of eircode!

Your suggested codes would overlap with British codes and look confusingly identical (eg BN is Brighton in that country, ME is Maidstone etc).

LK - Limerick and Lusk and the existing car registration lettering space. Yet another confused and confusing recipe for disaster !

But perhaps that is part of somebody's plan in relation to this thread? Idea spam?

SpaceTime · 04-09-2014 11:30am

larchill wrote: »

Notice the Delivery Area here, Dublin postal areas are subdivided: D1.1, D1.2, D1.3 etc. Also outside of the D1 - D24 areas the rest of Dublin is also coded: BN1, BN2 for Balbriggan, LK1 for Lusk, ME1 & ME2 for Malahide, etc! Maybe these will be the 1st part of eircode!

They won't be as they're internal An Post codes not public ones.

The only other published codes are Cork 1… to Cork 4 which are on most of the street signage too but we're generally never used on addresses for some reason.

larchill · 04-09-2014 11:50am

larchill wrote: »

Notice the Delivery Area here, Dublin postal areas are subdivided: D1.1, D1.2, D1.3 etc. Also outside of the D1 - D24 areas the rest of Dublin is also coded: BN1, BN2 for Balbriggan, LK1 for Lusk, ME1 & ME2 for Malahide, etc! Maybe these will be the 1st part of eircode!

Ironically, The rest of the country outside of Dublin has no Delivery Areas. Instead, the Zone is used! Zone1 to 148 starting in Carlow with Zone1, & ending with Zone 148 in Wicklow with the Counties in alphabetical order: Carlow, Cavan, Clare, ... Wicklow. I notice that Drogheda Urban is Zone 93, Drogheda Rural is Zone 93A - ah, shades of D6W here!

TheBustedFlush · 04-09-2014 11:51am

larchill wrote: »

Notice the Delivery Area here, Dublin postal areas are subdivided: D1.1, D1.2, D1.3 etc. Also outside of the D1 - D24 areas the rest of Dublin is also coded: BN1, BN2 for Balbriggan, LK1 for Lusk, ME1 & ME2 for Malahide, etc! Maybe these will be the 1st part of eircode!

How could they be?

The current stated plan is to have a letter, number, number format for all the routing keys except for the existing D6W.

Tow · 04-09-2014 12:52pm

TheBustedFlush wrote: »

How could they be?

The current stated plan is to have a letter, number, number format for all the routing keys except for the existing D6W.

At a guess the (larger) areas in the An Post junk mail link are the existing 'USP Principal Post Towns' of which we are told there are 139.
It is already known that the Routing Key will:
'Outside Dublin, avoid geographical association and be language neutral'
'Routing Keys will be based on manual mail sortation. I.E. follows a certain sequence'.
The Routing Key 1st character is limited to the letters: A,C,D,E,F,H,K,N,P,R,T,V,W,X,Y.

So, starting at the top of the country (The Free State) and 'follows a certain sequence' you get A, C and the D (Dublin Postal Districts), then continue down and around the country using the rest of the available letters.

larchill · 04-09-2014 1:56pm

Tow wrote: »

At a guess the (larger) areas in the An Post junk mail link are the existing 'USP Principal Post Towns' of which we are told there are 139.
It is already known that the Routing Key will:
'Outside Dublin, avoid geographical association and be language neutral'
'Routing Keys will be based on manual mail sortation. I.E. follows a certain sequence'.
The Routing Key 1st character is limited to the letters: A,C,D,E,F,H,K,N,P,R,T,V,W,X,Y.

So, starting at the top of the country (The Free State) and 'follows a certain sequence' you get A, C and the D (Dublin Postal Districts), then continue down and around the country using the rest of the available letters.

Aye probably! One can be fairly certain that they will have a close association with the Postal Towns. They'll therefore will probably coincide with the 1st part eircodes outside of Dublin.

SpaceTime · 04-09-2014 3:51pm

You'd think with the rollout of property tax and water meters, they could at least do something useful like also give every house a number while they are digging up their driveway.

Joined up thinking however isn't a strong point here.

Bray Head · 04-09-2014 5:29pm

Impetus wrote: »

This is the most fundamental issue in identifying each building and making it accessible. Every other country in Europe has done this. Nobody has suggested that one re-number houses. Rural roads can be named by using the townland name and using a suffix of perhaps 1,2, 3 etc. It is not imposing a new road name on a townland address to call what was Ballytownlandx Ballytownlandx Road. If there are two of them, the second becomes Ballytownlandx Road 2.

This is no more expensive (starting off with the National Geodirectory database) and assigning a code which is an “encrypted”, compressed derivative of the grid reference – which is will create a meaningless, complex, likely to contain typos, un-memorable, dumb, re-invent the wheel, not compatible with anywhere else, “code system”.

Why would it create public resistance for rural householders to have a proper road address like most urban dwellers already have?

The main reason is that people will object to the townland they are assigned to claiming that they belong in another. They may also object to the postal town they are assigned to. You cannot object to the specifics of a code like axq 3d43, although you may choose not to use it. Sequential numbers are also not robust to the addition of one-off houses haphazardly over time, which we are very fond of in Ireland.

Impetus wrote: »

People like you, assuming you live in a rural area with no address (and I wonder if you do) would be free to continue to use your old Ballytownlandx “address” and keep your head in the sand.

I actually live in an urban area. Let's call it Random Square. I live at 23 Random Square South. There is a 23 Random Square North which sometimes gets my post. There is no 23 Random Square West (it stops at 16), and there is no Random Square East at all. This is a useful urban address system for casual purposes, but pizza delivery people get confused all the time. I would be much happier to give them a unique code that points their device direct to my house. One of my neighbours has actually invested in a weatherproof sign for outside his house which says 'Mick's Barber's is at 20 Random Square NORTH, 50 meters that way'! This is the urban address system we have and it is not functional. There are estates where people don't agree on house numbers, adopt names instead, etc. There are instances of different roads with the same name all over Dublin. I could go on.

But even a perfectly designed traditional address system is not perfect for deliveries either. Take for example the Harold's Cross Road in Dublin. It is about 2 kilometres long and has numbers up to about 400. Does '61c Harold's Cross Road' contain much information in the absence of reference to anything else? Some, perhaps, if you know where the road is and you want to spend time driving up and down slowly peering at house numbers to find 61c.

But in digital age the first thing you will do is key it into a satnav or smartphone to find it. And this is exactly the same as what you would do with a postcode, with far less effort too. (Have you ever come across a 7-character address in Ireland?)

Impetus wrote: »

One could go on, in relation to the matters outlined in your rather long, judgmentally arrogant posting, but I think this posting which just applies to your first point is long enough.

Still short enough for you to read it all! Anyway, my point was that overhauling the address system would be nice but it is a distraction from the need for postcodes, and it's my final word on it.

Bray Head · 04-09-2014 5:38pm

fricatus wrote: »

This should be part of the design and could easily be achieved. Taking the sample postcode from Eircode's site (A65 F4E2), the A65 bit already identifies a larger area like a Dublin postcode. If the F4 bit identified a smaller area within that, and the E2 bit was random, then the code would be useful for the collection of statistics, quoting for delivery times, insurance ratings, etc., while allaying any privacy concerns there were.

It's incredible that this feature seems to be excluded at the design stage!

I agree. Ideally, the most efficient use of the 7-character A65 F4E2 would be to split it in three:

A6: large area
F5: small area
4E2: Dwelling reference

The need to keep the existing Dublin postcodes wastes the third digit in my view and makes it more difficult to have a second pair in the middle that refers to a small area. Leaving only two digits for the dwelling reference probably wouldn't give enough to choose from. Leaving three digits (25^3) certainly would have.

Impetus · 04-09-2014 6:40pm

Bray Head wrote: »

The main reason is that people will object to the townland they are assigned to claiming that they belong in another. They may also object to the postal town they are assigned to. You cannot object to the specifics of a code like axq 3d43, although you may choose not to use it. Sequential numbers are also not robust to the addition of one-off houses haphazardly over time, which we are very fond of in Ireland.

This is more putting your head in the sand stuff. Just because somebody says they live in BallytownX, when in reality they live in BallytownY is no excuse for leaving half the country without any findable postal address. If necessary you can write to everybody in a relevant area, or the entire country if you wish (there may be some people in Dublin 4 who think they live in Carlow NE) -

"we propose to assign 200 BallytownX Road, 9999 Townname, to your property in the new national streamlined postal addressing structure, to facilitate deliveries to your home and make it easier for visitors to find.

"If you have any objections to either the choice of road name or town name, please have your say. To do so please either go to www.mypostcode.ie (or whatever URL you like) and tell us. We will be basing the newly assigned address on what a majority of people in your townland tell us. The deadline for your feedback is (date x)" Alternatively phone us on 1800 MYPOST (1800 697678). Each letter would have an ID number which they would enter (or supply to the call centre). Upon entering the ID number they would see their proposed address and check boxes for neighbouring townlands and perhaps town names for them to tick as alternatives. The obvious alternative options would be pre-filled and perhaps a blank box might be left for suggestions that the system had not considered. And if 70% of the respondents pointed out that they were in a different road or town (ie greater than 50%) it would be advisable to go with their view.

If you don't give people the opportunity to vote on contentious town or townland (ie new road) names, surely this is politicians being scared of democracy. Or if politicians are washing their hands of this idea, it is an example of the permanent government not doing a proper and professional job. This is a once in a multi-century event, which must be got right - otherwise the costs of dysfunctionality will be repeated over and over, decade after decade in terms of lost time and waste of productivity.

Where you give an open text box option to people to enter their own place name, you will get a few idiots and jokers who might claim to live on the moon. A computer system can ignore these one offs. You are not going to get 20 households in a townland claiming they live in the moon. But 15 of those householders might have a different view of their townland ie road name or town name, and you (ie gov.ie, perm.gov.ie & co) would be idiots not to take this reality on board.

Bray Head wrote: »

I actually live in an urban area. Let's call it Random Square. I live at 23 Random Square South. There is a 23 Random Square North which sometimes gets my post. There is no 23 Random Square West (it stops at 16), and there is no Random Square East at all. This is a useful urban address system for casual purposes, but pizza delivery people get confused all the time. I would be much happier to give them a unique code that points their device direct to my house. One of my neighbours has actually invested in a weatherproof sign for outside his house which says 'Mick's Barber's is at 20 Random Square NORTH, 50 meters that way'! This is the urban address system we have and it is not functional. There are estates where people don't agree on house numbers, adopt names instead, etc. There are instances of different roads with the same name all over Dublin. I could go on.

I find it difficult to believe that somebody who has difficulty with 23 Random Square West and 23 Random Square North - ie can't read the road name and match it to the delivery address label in front of their face - will get any help from D06 Y8QZ. I have had GPS devices since the mid 1990s. While they are helpful much of the time, they sometimes come up with appalling decisions and many have difficulty in street canyons. If you know your way, and use a GPS chances are you will ignore it, except for traffic jam info delivered by RDS-TMC. And they take time to find their current location. etc

Bray Head wrote: »

But even a perfectly designed traditional address system is not perfect for deliveries either. Take for example the Harold's Cross Road in Dublin. It is about 2 kilometres long and has numbers up to about 400. Does '61c Harold's Cross Road' contain much information in the absence of reference to anything else? Some, perhaps, if you know where the road is and you want to spend time driving up and down slowly peering at house numbers to find 61c.

That is a separate micro-issue affecting a small number of houses in urban areas. It is not an excuse to abandon road names and house numbers. The solution there, if you want to fix it, is renumbering overlay. eg give everybody on the road numbers in the 1000 to 1500 range. So 4 Harold's X Road is now probably 1004 Harold's X Road.

Bray Head wrote: »

But in digital age the first thing you will do is key it into a satnav or smartphone to find it. And this is exactly the same as what you would do with a postcode, with far less effort too. (Have you ever come across a 7-character address in Ireland?)

Get real. There is a large proportion of the population that never uses GPS and GPS is far from perfect. And people make typos or can't hear or don't listen or whatever.

The proposed Eircode is not international business friendly, not average person friendly, not tourist friendly, not delivery friendly, not web friendly, not new building friendly, not logistics friendly, not automated sorting friendly, not anything friendly except for the people promoting the "system" - ie those with €€€€€ in mind for their pockets or see it as a head in the sand escape route to making a decision that they think will offend nobody. In terms of the latter I am certain they got that wrong, as time will tell if this idiotic home brew Eircode gets implemented.

tvc15 · 04-09-2014 7:08pm

Bray Head wrote: »

I agree. Ideally, the most efficient use of the 7-character A65 F4E2 would be to split it in three:

A6: large area
F5: small area
4E2: Dwelling reference

The need to keep the existing Dublin postcodes wastes the third digit in my view and makes it more difficult to have a second pair in the middle that refers to a small area. Leaving only two digits for the dwelling reference probably wouldn't give enough to choose from. Leaving three digits (25^3) certainly would have.

This would have been much better in my opinion but would still have drawn criticism from truckers and loc8 fans. The problem froma practical point of view is that it would have required some local knowledge and detailed mapping etc above and beyond assigning random codes. Random codes are as cheap as it gets from a development point of view and thats what happens when a private company gets the tender. That's not saying a government scheme would have been any better, but you have to pick your poison

Leonard Shelby · 04-09-2014 9:08pm

Impetus wrote: »

This is more putting your head in the sand stuff. Just because somebody says they live in BallytownX, when in reality they live in BallytownY is no excuse for leaving half the country without any findable postal address. If necessary you can write to everybody in a relevant area, or the entire country if you wish (there may be some people in Dublin 4 who think they live in Carlow NE) -

"we propose to assign 200 BallytownX Road, 9999 Townname, to your property in the new national streamlined postal addressing structure, to facilitate deliveries to your home and make it easier for visitors to find.

"If you have any objections to either the choice of road name or town name, please have your say. To do so please either go to www.mypostcode.ie (or whatever URL you like) and tell us. We will be basing the newly assigned address on what a majority of people in your townland tell us. The deadline for your feedback is (date x)" Alternatively phone us on 1800 MYPOST (1800 697678). Each letter would have an ID number which they would enter (or supply to the call centre). Upon entering the ID number they would see their proposed address and check boxes for neighbouring townlands and perhaps town names for them to tick as alternatives. The obvious alternative options would be pre-filled and perhaps a blank box might be left for suggestions that the system had not considered. And if 70% of the respondents pointed out that they were in a different road or town (ie greater than 50%) it would be advisable to go with their view.

If you don't give people the opportunity to vote on contentious town or townland (ie new road) names, surely this is politicians being scared of democracy. Or if politicians are washing their hands of this idea, it is an example of the permanent government not doing a proper and professional job. This is a once in a multi-century event, which must be got right - otherwise the costs of dysfunctionality will be repeated over and over, decade after decade in terms of lost time and waste of productivity.

Where you give an open text box option to people to enter their own place name, you will get a few idiots and jokers who might claim to live on the moon. A computer system can ignore these one offs. You are not going to get 20 households in a townland claiming they live in the moon. But 15 of those householders might have a different view of their townland ie road name or town name, and you (ie gov.ie, perm.gov.ie & co) would be idiots not to take this reality on board.

I find it difficult to believe that somebody who has difficulty with 23 Random Square West and 23 Random Square North - ie can't read the road name and match it to the delivery address label in front of their face - will get any help from D06 Y8QZ. I have had GPS devices since the mid 1990s. While they are helpful much of the time, they sometimes come up with appalling decisions and many have difficulty in street canyons. If you know your way, and use a GPS chances are you will ignore it, except for traffic jam info delivered by RDS-TMC. And they take time to find their current location. etc

That is a separate micro-issue affecting a small number of houses in urban areas. It is not an excuse to abandon road names and house numbers. The solution there, if you want to fix it, is renumbering overlay. eg give everybody on the road numbers in the 1000 to 1500 range. So 4 Harold's X Road is now probably 1004 Harold's X Road.

Get real. There is a large proportion of the population that never uses GPS and GPS is far from perfect. And people make typos or can't hear or don't listen or whatever.

The proposed Eircode is not international business friendly, not average person friendly, not tourist friendly, not delivery friendly, not web friendly, not new building friendly, not logistics friendly, not automated sorting friendly, not anything friendly except for the people promoting the "system" - ie those with €€€€€ in mind for their pockets or see it as a head in the sand escape route to making a decision that they think will offend nobody. In terms of the latter I am certain they got that wrong, as time will tell if this idiotic home brew Eircode gets implemented.

How silly of Eircode not to listen to the sensible suggestions on this thread, exemplified here by Impy. I mean why didn't they just choose this simple, cheap, politically neutral option recommended above of running a mere 40,000 referendums, pitting neighbours against each other, causing local resistance to any change of address or postcode.
By the way, as I know this type of thing really annoys you, I've heard a rumour that on Sunday we will go ahead with a version of a game that doesn't comply with any international standards, purely because we have the cheek to think we deserve our own culture and traditions. The shame of it all, I hope the Swiss don't find out....

yuloni · 04-09-2014 9:13pm

This post has been deleted.

Impetus · 05-09-2014 11:46am

Leonard Shelby wrote: »

How silly of Eircode not to listen to the sensible suggestions on this thread, exemplified here by Impy. I mean why didn't they just choose this simple, cheap, politically neutral option recommended above of running a mere 40,000 referendums, pitting neighbours against each other, causing local resistance to any change of address or postcode.

By the way, as I know this type of thing really annoys you, I've heard a rumour that on Sunday we will go ahead with a version of a game that doesn't comply with any international standards, purely because we have the cheek to think we deserve our own culture and traditions. The shame of it all, I hope the Swiss don't find out....

If Capita did the job properly (in terms of matching townlands and derived road names) and similar for town names, I do not think that there would be many people suggesting alterations to the proposed names derived from the Geodirectory. After all, the contents of the Geodirectory had input from every postman in the country – people whose finger is on the pulse of public thinking – particularly in rural areas. Rather than building on the knowledge, and making use of it, it is being thrown in the trashcan.

The issue that worries me is entities involved in the exercise, who have zero background knowledge of the country, who appear to have done little research on the issue, and who appear to have zero experience across Europe in terms of how current thinking and practice in building identification and postcode matters. Companies who have a bad record in their own home country. A country whose non-standard postcode system, Capita is copying, sort-of.

It seems to me that Capita's forte is earning big money for doing dirty work mainly for the British government. The requirement for an intelligent postcode and address system for Ireland requires intelligence and experience of other postcode and building ID systems.

Basically Capita is the type of company I suspect that many Irish people, if they knew all the facts would not wish to be in possession of their own or their country’s address database. How could the government have got it so wrong? Is it any wonder that the Eircode stinks to high heaven from the perspective of clear thinking?

A few snippets from the media:

In an analysis of outsourcing companies, in a British newspaper “The Independent”, James Ashton writing in the Independent recently suggested that “in order to feed the growth that investors have come to expect, they have become slick bidding machines first and deliverers of great work second.” *

Other recent headlines have also exposed some significant issues.
The Guardian newspaper “Today, another example: a get-the-hell-out text sent by Capita to British citizen Bobby Chan. He happens to be a credited immigration adviser at a central London law centre”**

“Capita, the company the U.K. government is paying to help clean up its muddled immigration control system, has been accused of mishandling cases and getting just as mixed up as the bureaucrats it was supposed to be replacing.”*** (InformationWeek)

“'Murdering scumbags': How did outsourcing get into this mess? Outsourcing firms seem to stagger from one scandal to the next, with even their Government paymasters putting the boot in at times.”****

Failed IT system (run by Capita) costs British army £6.7 million - BBC*****

“Anyone else spotted how badly messed up the whole contractor recruitment framework is in the MOD now that everything has to go through Capita?” Contractor UK ******

Harassing Norwegians *******

*http://www.boxwood.com/blog/mess-for-less-is-this-really-working

**http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/oct/15/hugh-muir-diary-get-the-hell-out-texts

http://www.corporatewatch.org/news/2013/jan/24/capita-gets-bigger-slice-uk-immigration-cake-chokes-first-bites

***http://www.informationweek.com/regulations/uk-immigration-system-blasted-for-data-errors/d/d-id/1108140?

****http://www.managementtoday.co.uk/news/1286576/murdering-scumbags-outsourcing-mess/

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-25731027*****

****** http://forums.contractoruk.com/business-contracts/100392-capita-mod-contractor-framework-etc.html

http://forums.contractoruk.com/business-contracts/100392-capita-mod-contractor-framework-etc.html

http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2013/01/505937.html

http://www.computerweekly.com/feature/Capita-admits-to-ILA-failings-but-denies-negligence

********http://www.expatforum.com/expats/britain-expat-forum-expats-living-uk/360153-text-message-capita.html

Impetus · 05-09-2014 11:48am

yuloni wrote: »

This post has been deleted.

I was aware that mypostcode.ie was taken, which is why I suggested some alternative. I don't know who is sitting on it. Having said that Capita have no shortage of resources to buy same, if necessary.

Leonard Shelby · 05-09-2014 12:20pm

Impetus wrote: »

If Capita did the job properly (in terms of matching townlands and derived road names) and similar for town names, I do not think that there would be many people suggesting alterations to the proposed names derived from the Geodirectory. After all, the contents of the Geodirectory had input from every postman in the country – people whose finger is on the pulse of public thinking – particularly in rural areas. Rather than building on the knowledge, and making use of it, it is being thrown in the trashcan.
[/URL]

The address in the Eircode database is the Geodirectory address, you do know that it is built on Geodirectory?

The rest of your xenophobic rant doesn't bear response. Capita are a massive company, working on tons of different projects. If there are even a tiny percentage of these that cause issues then you get plenty of reports to quote.

Bearingpoint and AutoAddress are the local partners of Capita working on the project, they bring the expertise that you are calling for. Expertise that you are clearly lacking.

Impetus · 05-09-2014 1:05pm

Leonard Shelby wrote: »

The address in the Eircode database is the Geodirectory address, you do know that it is built on Geodirectory?

I am well aware of that, and it seems to me that you are missing the point. The Geodirectory was built from local postman/women's door by door knowledge. If you use the town and townland names as a base, from the Geodirectory, I suspect that few people will say they are incorrect, or argue about road names derived from data in this compilation. And I have no doubt there will be the odd person who has an issue with this - and I yesterday suggested a democratic approach to dealing with this.

Leonard Shelby wrote: »

The rest of your xenophobic rant doesn't bear response. Capita are a massive company, working on tons of different projects. If there are even a tiny percentage of these that cause issues then you get plenty of reports to quote.

I have no doubt that Capita is a large company. But someone from Capita calling me a Xenophobe is rich. I don't send text messages to black people, or brown people or even Norwegians threatening them to get out of my country. Capita has grown large thanks mainly to British government contracts to do dirty work for them. I am simply making the observation that a company of this type has no place in Ireland rolling out a postcode system, or anything else. Particularly if it involves compilation of data on the addresses and locations of peoples' private homes and places of business.

Leonard Shelby wrote: »

Bearingpoint and AutoAddress are the local partners of Capita working on the project, they bring the expertise that you are calling for. Expertise that you are clearly lacking.

BaringPoint – you mean this BearingPoint? https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20041222/1052236.shtml

L1011 · 05-09-2014 3:05pm

Capita's reputation is bad across absolutely everything to do; not a situation of one or two projects out of thousands causing issues.

National Postcodes to be introduced

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