Real-time S42 Address Identification Solution
How to enable residents to better access information about their postal address?
The Trinidad and Tobago Postal Corporation is seeking the development of a solution that provides the public with easy access to residential and commercial S42 addresses.
The Trinidad and Tobago Postal Corporation completed its launch of a S42 international address standard, nationwide in 2020. The new addressing standard and postal code is designed to improve TTPost’s mail delivery by improving the quality of addresses nationwide, through the assignment of building numbers in a logical and sequential manner. This will eliminate the use of lamp post numbers, mile markers, lot numbers, corner of, and street addresses without a building number that are commonly used in addresses throughout the country.
This standard is an internationally recognized and accepted addressing standard developed by the Universal Postal Union, the United Nations Agency that provides a forum for cooperation between Postal Administrations worldwide. Within this standard, buildings are numbered sequentially, even numbers are on one side and odd numbers are on the opposite side of the street. Building numbers are also assigned to vacant lots to cater for future development. This standard also includes the assigning of a Postal Code to all addresses.
Although customers were informed of their new postal address through the dissemination of address cards which included the new postal codes, a lot of customers need access to their new address information as they may have lost or misplaced their address cards or simply did not understand what was the purpose of the address card. Customers who require their new address for conducting business need to reapply for an address card. Also, customers who are conducting online transactions have a delay in accessing their address and postal code as they must fill out a form and wait 24 hours for a response instead of accessing that information on an online forum instantly. Additionally, customers continue to use their old addresses which continues the problem of inability to deliver packages due to improper addresses as well as mis-delivery of packages and a longer time span for delivery of packages. Therefore, the goal of improving efficiency is not achieved as customers are not adopting the new addresses due to the inability to easily access this information.
TTPost has the capability to get any location’s address on a map where all addresses were mapped on a GIS platform. But this information is available only to TTPost internal staff. To get this information, the customers now fill out an online form which is emailed to TTPost and the email is responded to within 24 hours.
Through digital technology TTPost would like to allow customers themselves to be able to find their location on a map, click on their property and get their full S42 address.
The solution should include a user-friendly interface that would allow customers to access the application from both phones and computers.
The solution should also allow for customers to submit address queries to TTPost, this would facilitate those customers who have recently constructed new buildings and would like to receive their new address for the first time and request the official address card as supporting documents for future transactions.
Overall, the challenge solution should include:
- An address locator on a map
- Request for an address card
- Submission of address queries
- Information on the S42 address standard
- It should also allow for updated information to be displayed. When TTPost updates the information on their database it should be reflected on the application.
The current address database is based on a GIS platform and an SQL platform. Customers can email, call or fill out a postal code query form from the TTPost website in order to gain access to their address information.
Legally, TTPost is not allowed to share address information wholesale to other organizations, thus the solution should allow public access, without actually handing over (now allowing to copy) the information.