Eircode - its implemetation (merged)

plodder wrote: »

'in the absence of others' - that doesn't make sense really. SACs were already existing in the ECAD. They could have just used those, but as the designers realised a different hierarchical code was better. I don't know why people are getting their knickers in a twist over it. What matters most is that Eircodes themselves stay the same.

Nothing in a twist here at all. Just discussing. I think their point is that any/all companies could have done what they did themselves and utilised eircode, but they didn't seem to understand what they could do with it. So Autoaddress did a demo

plodder wrote: »

As for being a demo, are they not built into the app?

Yes maybe demo is the wrong word as its fully functioning. But the point being you could build your own app and use your own labels and have nothing to do with Autoaddress. They built an app to show how it's done

SACs can be labelled in any way that's useful to an organisation. The delivery IDs that Autoaddress have given to them are just examples of what can be done. There's never been anything to stop any member of the FTAI, or the FTAI as a consortium, from using the SAC information in the ECAD to come up with their own labels to suit their own purposes. All the information has been there from day one ready to be used in whatever ways people want.

sondagefaux wrote: »

SACs can be labelled in any way that's useful to an organisation. The delivery IDs that Autoaddress have given to them are just examples of what can be done. There's never been anything to stop any member of the FTAI, or the FTAI as a consortium, from using the SAC information in the ECAD to come up with their own labels to suit their own purposes. All the information has been there from day one ready to be used in whatever ways people want.

What's (potentially) new is the possibility that a limited dataset that might suit such purposes would be released free of charge. Apparently, it was in the presentation that Autoaddress made to FTAI about it, and presumably that's what they are so enthusiastic about.

Also, it would help to have a single user-friendly, reasonably standard labeling system for SA's. It would then be possible to refer to specific areas using a simple code and be sure that everyone is talking about the same place. If Eircode released a dataset like this, it would be authoritative in that sense.

There's no need for an authoritative code apart from Eircode. The great advantage of Eircodes, and of the ECAD containing SAC information, is that they can be combined to form whatever clusters of Eircodes and/or SACs, using whatever labelling, as desired without the constraints that imposing one single label or one set of clusters necessarily brings.

sondagefaux wrote: »

There's no need for an authoritative code apart from Eircode. The great advantage of Eircodes, and of the ECAD containing SAC information, is that they can be combined to form whatever clusters of Eircodes and/or SACs, using whatever labelling, as desired without the constraints that imposing one single label or one set of clusters necessarily brings.

That was the argument used against including SACs in the first place. They could be argued to constrain users to the particular boundaries that they employ. Of course, adding something useful like SACs doesn't constrain anyone in any way, and they are in it now.

In any case, whether these codes are authoritative or not is less important than some dataset being freely licensed, just like equivalent datasets associated with the UK postcode. Whether it contains the original 9 digit SAC or something different is less important.

clewbays

It will be interesting to see how much change there is in the Small Area Codes after the results from the 2016 census are available - the Autoaddress proposal for coding them in grouped grid looks a sensible compromise:

In order to best utilise Small Areas for delivery planning we want to have a simple labelling system that allows easy grouping for delivery planning.

We'll take the positive aspect of grids here and use a grid based labelling methodology.

We've used a 10x10 grid with letters A to K ( we don't use letter i) going from West to East, and numbers 0 to 9 going from South to North. The first two characters describe an area of 45km x 45km and the full four characters describe an area of 4.5km x 4.5km.

plodder wrote: »

sondagefaux wrote: »

There's no need for an authoritative code apart from Eircode. The great advantage of Eircodes, and of the ECAD containing SAC information, is that they can be combined to form whatever clusters of Eircodes and/or SACs, using whatever labelling, as desired without the constraints that imposing one single label or one set of clusters necessarily brings.

That was the argument used against including SACs in the first place. They could be argued to constrain users to the particular boundaries that they employ. Of course, adding something useful like SACs doesn't constrain anyone in any way, and they are in it now.

In any case, whether these codes are authoritative or not is less important than some dataset being freely licensed, just like equivalent datasets associated with the UK postcode. Whether it contains the original 9 digit SAC or something different is less important.

They were always in it (by it I presume you're talking about the Eircode ECAD).

sondagefaux wrote: »

They were always in it (by it I presume you're talking about the Eircode ECAD).

They were in it at the launch obviously, but I'm fairly sure they weren't in it when the draft design was first released. There was a debate here and elsewhere at the time, and they were added then.

For all practical purposes, at the launch means at the beginning.

12Phase

I still cannot believe what a hash has been made of these codes.

I was looking back through the threads on here and if you had any sense as a government agency, you'd just have dissected them and taken all the good ideas!

I'm glad we finally have a postcode system but it's pretty obvious the whole concept behind it is a business model about selling access not a public service and a piece of state infrastructure.
It's a structure that is as clear as mud!

It's obvious the state wanted a pays-for-itself and possibly a nice little revenue stream rather than an open system.

The downside is it looks like it's cumbersome to implement on logistics systems at larger providers who don't want to do ale thing bespoke for a small country, so uptake will ultimately be poor.

byrnefm

byrnefm wrote: »

April 2016: I emailed Eircode via their 'Contact Us' form this afternoon, giving the coordinates from Google Maps. I'll let you know if I get a reply.

Interestingly, I asked my colleague today if the Census Enumerator arrived. He said yes - the enumerator told him that his house was not on their map but that the person noticed his house along the way! It was lucky he got the form at all. And yet his house is on Google Street view .. from 2011.

Update: I checked my colleague's house on the Eircode site last Friday .. and his house now has the 'red dot' with an Eircode :-). He's not so sure about the town land they put him in but in fairness to the Eircode group, it only took 5 weeks before his house was assigned an Eircode.

sondagefaux wrote: »

For all practical purposes, at the launch means at the beginning.

The point was: it was argued that ECAD should be simply a database of points with no aggregation whatsoever, because (the argument went) that aggregation for one purpose doesn't suit all purposes. But, at some point in the design process, small area codes were added which goes against that philosophy.

It's really not that big a deal of course, because adding something to a database doesn't in any way reduce the utility of the rest of the database.

If anything, what seems to be becoming clear is that the "one size fits all" philosophy concerning the data sets is the problem. ie it's the ECAD or nothing for any serious applications that need location information.

If eircode wants to be as useful as the UK postcode for delivery (sorting and routing), then they need to release a dataset FOC, and freely usable which contains a list of all Eircodes, the SAC for each, and a list of centroid locations for each SAC. How the SACs are labeled is less important (if it's a free reuse license) because the work that others have done (like AutoAddress) can be used then.

If you want it for free, just use the AutoAddress app. If you want something bespoke, pay for it. I don't have a problem with the state getting revenue from work it (or a company it's hired) has done.

There is the concept of 'public goods'. It doesn't make sense to charge for everything as sometimes it's more efficient for the state to suck up the cost and let people just use it. An analogy might be the roads. It's not practical to charge all road users, but it might make sense to charge for a "premium product" like a motorway. It's something I predicted ages ago, that the complicated one size fits all license for Eircode would end suiting very few use cases. As Brian Lucey has pointed out today on Twitter, very few companies in the logistics/transport sector are using it - the very sector that should get most of the benefit

and while the Autoaddress app is very nice and is useful so long as it stays free*, it's not something that business can use to build into their own IT systems.

* maybe I would pay something for it. But, only a small upfront cost - subscriptions, or paying per lookup, then no way.

plodder wrote: »

There is the concept of 'public goods'. It doesn't make sense to charge for everything as sometimes it's more efficient for the state to suck up the cost and let people just use it. An analogy might be the roads. It's not practical to charge all road users, but it might make sense to charge for a "premium product" like a motorway. It's something I predicted ages ago, that the complicated one size fits all license for Eircode would end suiting very few use cases. As Brian Lucey has pointed out today on Twitter, very few companies in the logistics/transport sector are using it - the very sector that should get most of the benefit

and while the Autoaddress app is very nice and is useful so long as it stays free*, it's not something that business can use to build into their own IT systems.

* maybe I would pay something for it. But, only a small upfront cost - subscriptions, or paying per lookup, then no way.

you pay for non motorway roads in motor tax, without tax your car can't use the roads. kinda the same model as Eircode, those who use it, pay for it. in my opinion, a far better system than simply socialising the cost of it across the entire population.

plodder wrote: »

As Brian Lucey has pointed out today on Twitter, very few companies in the logistics/transport sector are using it - the very sector that should get most of the benefit

its interesting that the main couriers or any courier who uses eircode wasn't in the survey...i.e. An Post, Nightline, Fastway, DPD. maybe autoaddress need to pay the rest a visit to open their eyes, as when they did that for the FTAI members we got a "very impressed" from them

Carawaystick

ukoda wrote: »

you pay for non motorway roads in motor tax, without tax your car can't use the roads. kinda the same model as Eircode, those who use it, pay for it. in my opinion, a far better system than simply socialising the cost of it across the entire population.

Except pedestrians and cyclists and foreign drivers can use the roads for free already.

Carawaystick wrote: »

Except pedestrians and cyclists and foreign drivers can use the roads for free already.

And "light" users of eircode can use it for free 15 times a day, there's always exceptions

and it's not only a question of who pays. Complicated restrictive licenses hinder usage. Look at the whole google affair. If people here are to be believed the problem has been that the original license just didn't work for them and wasn't suited to the navigation sector generally.

plodder wrote: »

and it's not only a question of who pays. Complicated restrictive licenses hinder usage. Look at the whole google affair. If people here are to be believed the problem has been that the original license just didn't work for them and wasn't suited to the navigation sector generally.

I'm also not so sure what's complicated about the licensing, you pay per lookup, the more you use the cheaper it is, you can pay as you go or block buy lookups.

Are you basing that on the eircode licensing fees they published themselves? Because bear in mind that's not really geared towards an actual end user, it's more for resellers.

If you want to buy eircode form a reseller (which would be the norm) then it's very very straight forward from most of them:

You pay a set fee per lookup and that's it.

ukoda wrote: »

I'm also not so sure what's complicated about the licensing, you pay per lookup, the more you use the cheaper it is, you can pay as you go or block buy lookups.

Are you basing that on the eircode licensing fees they published themselves? Because bear in mind that's not really geared towards an actual end user, it's more for resellers.

If you want to buy eircode form a reseller (which would be the norm) then it's very very straight forward from most of them:

You pay a set fee per lookup and that's it.

pay per lookup doesn't work for google. Check some of boatmad's posts on the question. I can't link to posts here but he says the delay in signing up google was due to licensing issues (which he says have been resolved).

BTW where did you get the information that CBRE didn't include any of the couriers that are using Eircode in their survey?

Also FTAI haven't changed their stance re Eircode. This possible enhancement to eircode (which you seem to be opposed to) is what they like the sound of.

plodder wrote: »

pay per lookup doesn't work for google. Check some of boatmad's posts on the question. I can't link to posts here but he says the delay in signing up google was due to licensing issues (which he says have been resolved).

BTW where did you get the information that CBRE didn't include any of the couriers that are using Eircode in their survey?

Not working and being complicated are 2 different things

I got the info from his blog, he posted a picture with the logos of those who were surveyed and I noticed the absence of the ones who do actually use eircode

plodder wrote: »

Also FTAI haven't changed their stance re Eircode. This possible enhancement to eircode (which you seem to be opposed to) is what they like the sound of.

I'm all for it! What in opposed to is them trying to make out its some sort of replacement for eircode, when in fact it was there all along and they just didn't know they could use it in the way Autoaddress have shown them

ukoda wrote: »

Not working and being complicated are 2 different things

Okay. Lets just say it doesn't work then.

I got the info from his blog, he posted a picture with the logos of those who were surveyed and I noticed the absence of the ones who do actually use eircode

I don't think he was claiming they were the only companies surveyed, and it wasn't him who did the survey anyway. I'll look into it and report the gory details here later

plodder wrote: »

Okay. Lets just say it doesn't work then.

I don't think he was claiming they were the only companies surveyed, and it wasn't him who did the survey anyway. I'll look into it and report the gory details here later

Doesn't work for Google as they would be a huge user, if I were them, I wouldn't want a pay per look up either, I'd want a flat fee licence

12Phase

Eircode really isn't in a very strong bargaining position with Google. They're in no rush.

Maybe. If AutoAddress produce a desktop version of this app, I wouldn't bother putting Eircodes directly into google maps even if they do integrate them.

The AutoAddress app is very, very good and does a much better job imo than could be done with google maps.

All they need to do is produce a desktop version, get a lot more publicity for it, and it'll catch on very quickly.

More public sector uptake of Eircodes from the Companies Registration Office - see the AutoAddress Twitter account for details.

oscarBravo

plodder wrote: »

It's something I predicted ages ago, that the complicated one size fits all license for Eircode would end suiting very few use cases.

There are several different licensing models for the Eircode database; there are also multiple resellers with different licensing models. There is no "one size fits all" licence.