We need to liberate the Postcode Address File
takes.jamesomalley.co.uk
We need to liberate the Postcode Address File
1–10 of 317 posts
Re: We need to liberate the Postcode Address File
#2I can respect the arguments for making it public but there are strong arguments also to raise a high barrier of entry to discourage abuse. Further, the fewer users of the list, they easier they are to police.
Re: We need to liberate the Postcode Address File
#3I can respect the arguments for making it public but there are strong arguments also to raise a high barrier of entry to discourage abuse. Further, the fewer users of the list, they easier they are to police.
It's a lookup between postcode and address, what is the abuse cases you're worried about?
Re: We need to liberate the Postcode Address File
#4Australia also has ours locked away privately. You can purchase access, but...
You also need to sign a contract that you won't make the PDF, or anything you derive from it, publicly accessible. (At least, that was the case the ladt time I did).
[0] https://auspost.com.au/business/marketing-and-communications...
Re: We need to liberate the Postcode Address File
#5I can respect the arguments for making it public but there are strong arguments also to raise a high barrier of entry to discourage abuse. Further, the fewer users of the list, they easier they are to police.
You miss the point that it was once freely accessible, and now it is not.
Re: We need to liberate the Postcode Address File
#6Sadly I don't think this would happen, particularly if Ordnance Survey is responsible, all their data is paid for access.
We have a very different model for access to data produced by government agency use to that in the US.
USGS Topographic maps: public domain / free
UK OS Topographic maps: paid access, and it's not cheep
US National Weather Service: Public domain / free commercial use
UK MetOffie: Payed access for commercial use
Re: We need to liberate the Postcode Address File
#7I can respect the arguments for making it public but there are strong arguments also to raise a high barrier of entry to discourage abuse. Further, the fewer users of the list, they easier they are to police.
It's a lookup between postcode and address, what is the abuse cases you're worried about?
Considering that in UK if you live in a building, the door next to you can have a different postcode, I wouldn't worry at all
Re: We need to liberate the Postcode Address File
#8Sadly I don't think this would happen, particularly if Ordnance Survey is responsible, all their data is paid for access. We have a very different model for access to data produced by government agency use to that in the US. USGS Topographic maps: public domain / free UK OS Topographic maps: paid access, and it's not cheep US National Weather Service: Public domain / free commercial use UK MetOffie: Payed access for…
OS does release a large volume of open data, but yes, the vast majority of the good stuff is not open.
Re: We need to liberate the Postcode Address File
#9I can respect the arguments for making it public but there are strong arguments also to raise a high barrier of entry to discourage abuse. Further, the fewer users of the list, they easier they are to police.
You miss the point that it was once freely accessible, and now it is not.
I don’t believe it’s ever been accessible for free. It’s just that ownership has moved from the state to a private company and now it’s difficult to make it open.
Re: We need to liberate the Postcode Address File
#10On the other side of the Channel, the French government has managed to create the "BAN" (Base Adresse Nationale - National Address Database), a database of detailed postal addresses in the country along with precise GPS coordinates: https://adresse.data.gouv.fr/base-adresse-nationale
On top of the database they have provided an interface to view the data, interfaces for towns and cities to keep the data up-to-date, free APIs to search addresses and performing geocoding or reverse geocoding (https://adresse.data.gouv.fr/api-doc/adresse) and the data is openly licensed and available to download.
Feeding the BAN has been enforced by law, localities are required to put together and upload their "Base Adresse Locale" (Local Address Database)
The original data was obtained from multiple sources, including "La Poste", the French Royal Mail equivalent, and OpenStreetMap !