Do you know where your postboxes are?
As an example of how getting data out there can just be plain useful, let’s return to one of the winners of the Show Us A Better Way competition (remember that?).
Prizewinner: postbox locations.
Obstacle: Royal Mail wouldn’t release the data of the location of its 116,000 postboxes.
Solution: Freedom of Information request.
Obstacle: incomplete geographic information in the response (a postcode, not long/lat, plus a mystical Royal Mail reference per box); no collection times.
Solution: FOI request for the collection times and a bit of data marriage.
Obstacle: still don’t know where the postboxes actually are.
Solution: crowdsource it! Get people to pinpoint the locations of what they think are the postboxes onto an OpenStreetMap map. So far about 26,000 have been done – have you done the ones near you?
Obstacle: Royal Mail says it still holds all the rights to the locations of the postboxes.
Solution: actually, you don’t really need a solution. Toothpaste is notoriously hard to put back into the tube.
And as Matthew Somerville pointed out to us, knowing the locations of the postboxes means that one might be able to do “travelling salesman” analyses on the routes – which could have huge potential savings for the Royal Mail. How much does it spend on fuel and time doing collections every day? How much might it save with a proper analysis? Who knows? We won’t until we see all the postboxes put in their place.
And that’s why it’s better to rely on making government data available – free, in both senses of the word – than to try to create artificial “value” from it by charging.
Price does two things: it implies that what you are pricing has value; and it puts a barrier between the thing being “sold” and its potential users. If the users don’t want it enough, they won’t ever go across the barrier. If you take down the barrier, then you get every user you could ever get. And some of them will do really useful things with your product – that’s possible if it’s data.
- The following posts may be related...(the database guesses):
- Show Us A Better Way: the winners are chosen (6 November 2008; score: 11.03%)
- Welcome to the Free Our Data campaign blog (13 March 2006; score: 0%)
- About the Free Our Data blog (13 March 2006; score: 0%)
- Terrible design? Yes, sorry (15 March 2006; score: 0%)
- Ordnance Survey replies to "Give us back our crown jewels" (15 March 2006; score: 0%)
September 16th, 2009 at 7:22 am
Also, see postboxes.iamnear.net for an example of using the crowdsourced data in anger.
September 16th, 2009 at 7:55 pm
Although I have no evidence, I would find it amazing if RM didn’t already complete travelling salesman type analysis for their postal delivery – they are a logistics company after all?
September 16th, 2009 at 8:23 pm
Postal delivery, maybe – they do know the locations of all the houses through the PAF dataset. But postbox pickup – how can they do travelling salesman analysis if they don’t know where their postboxes are? :) The data they released, giving non-structured textual descriptions of each location, are all the data they have, they say.
September 17th, 2009 at 12:29 pm
I am surprised the National Security flag has not been waved yet. A number of years backs, I was refused to have postboxes as they were a terrorist target. Maybe I will just look for LB references on OS maps.
September 18th, 2009 at 7:13 am
The PAF doesn’t have every address, just look at the money ONS census are having to spend to get a one off address list for census enumeration.
September 21st, 2009 at 10:42 am
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September 21st, 2009 at 11:17 am
It escapes me why anyone would want to power on their computer and a website to find out where their nearest postbox is. Has a survey been done to find out how many people don’t know where their nearest is? People should be encouraged to step outside their homes and have a little stroll around their neighbourhood if they haven’t already doen that in the months or years they’ve lived in the same place for.
For once, good on the RM for not releasing that data. It’s a silly idea. What next? Where’s my nearest street light?
September 23rd, 2009 at 6:31 am
@ Gary F.
“It escapes me why anyone would want to power on their computer and a website to find out where their nearest postbox is….”
What appears to escape you is the entire point of the Free-our-Data campaign. You and I, every citizen of this country owns the Royal Mail, has paid for its creation and upkeep over the years since its foundation. You/we therefore have a right to know where its post boxes are, the locations of postcode boundaries. Ditto, to Ordnance Survey and Met Office etc data for the same reasons.
“What next? Where’s my nearest street light?”
But, if your street light is not working you might like to be able to go to a website and click on a map showing where it is to report the fault, rather than give the LA some vague location.
September 23rd, 2009 at 7:19 pm
@ Gary F
I’ve OFTEN wanted access to this data. OK I already know the location of my nearest postbox. But this would be GREAT for when I am on the move in unfamiliar places. Especially with those all-important collection times!
It may escape you, but there are so many unexpected benefits of opening this kind of data. Nicholas is right. Charles quoted a good example in the post (that of travelling salesman efficiencies) – and that’s just one.
Royal Mail are being ridiculous here. Talk about not knowing a good thing when they see it!
It’s like a bank not revealing where its branches are. Or maybe it’s more analogous to cash machines…
September 29th, 2009 at 1:28 pm
@Nicholas, we can already report broken streetlights on a map thanks to the wonderful fixmystreet.com. You click on a map to pinpoint the location of the broken light. With hindsight I can see the benefit if the map automatically showed you the exact locations (down to 1m) taking some of the guess work out of “pinning the tail on the donkey”.
True, I appreciate there is (sometimes hidden) value in releasing these data sets to the public. But I was still annoyed that funding was given to the “where’s my nearest postbox” website idea that won a competition last year. A dedicated website is not necessary and a waste of public money if the data is simply put into the public domain.