Why is a postcode system useful? It’s essential for routing and location identification purposes. When someone specifies his street name as Adenuga Str in Lagos, is he referring to the Adenuga Str in Alausa or the one in Oremeji Ifako? With a postcode system, this ambiguity is removed because you can identify which location is being referred to. Another use is for package or mail routing or routing in general. If I need to deliver three packages to locations A, B and C. I can effeciently route those packages if I know that B comes before C and than A along a particular route. I’m talking from a logical perspective. I might not know what other industries use postcode systems to do and that brings me to the case of open data.

The open data movement is one that clamours for and encourages the sharing of data in a raw and as discrete form as possible. Why? The advantages are similar to why web applications have APIs – to enable repurposing or data reuse. If I’m using postcode data to know which hospitals are closest to which postcode locations, another project might use it for something equally or even more useful.

Postcode data (until now) has been something you could only access from a few websites – mostly the Nigerian Postal Service website and a site like AddressDoctor. The utility only enabled individuals to know their postcodes – very little utility I would say. However, with my effort and the efforts and inspiritation from folks like Dipo Fasoro of WangoNet (who’s a strong believer and evangelist of open data) and Kayode Muyibi of Nairahost, we’ve been able to obtain this information from the Nigerian Postal Service website and convert it to a form that can be used by other applications.

Imagine the possibilities – dating websites could use the postcode to identify the location of a person and match their profiles to people in their area or ecommerce websites that could use that to batch delivery of orders. The applications are enormous. Eventually we hope to be able to map center points for each of these postcodes even increasing the utility.

The data as it is, is exactly in the form it was extracted. We’ve identified a number of corrections to be made and we’re crowdsourcing (essentially getting interested fellows from the public) the cleanup of the data.

There’s a lot of data locked up on sites like the Nigerian Postal Service and what we’ve demonstated with the postcode data is that this data can be put to more use if it can be made open and made available in a form that computers can use.

You can access the data that has been put on Google Fusion Tables here.

Victoria Island roadmap as appeared on Google Maps on 22 March, 2009

I dabbled into Google Maps mashups and built my first Google Maps application when I was working on my final year project in the University but then I saw little use for it locally.

A few months back, Google announced a community-based mapping project known as Google Map Maker. Google Map Maker enables the people who live in areas that have not been well covered by Google to map their localities using the tools that Google has provided. The implication of this is that you now have the ability to map your village, if you wanted to.

Google Map Maker tile of Victoria Island as at March 22, 2009

What’s the motivation?

That’s a rather interesting question because I never really gave thought to it when I started creating maps using Google Map Maker but in giving thought to it, I realized that in providing local content on the Internet not only does it makes the Internet richer but it also provides value for the locals. I earlier mentioned how the Mapping service was of little use to me because there wasn’t local data but now, with other people mapping different areas within the country, I am able to determine routes before setting out (for instance).

I remember a particular day I was to meet up with someone somewhere in Lagos Mainland. He described the point of meeting as around the intersection of Opebi Link Road. I wasn’t sure of the location but then I thought “worst case scenario, I’ll ask someone about it.” I decided to put Google Map Maker to the test. I did a search for Opebi Link Road and voila, it showed me the location and I was able to know where it was and how to get there.

Imagine then that you are looking for the nearest branch of a particular bank. Apart from having to consult the list of branches from the bank’s web site, you can look it up on Google Map Maker. Now eventually, the information will be integrated into Google Maps proper but for now, everything is still available on Google Map Maker.

So what happens if the information you are looking for is not available? Add it! There’s no reason why your company’s branches or building (or other features like street names, restaurants, churches, mosques, entertainment venues, etc) is not tagged on the map. Information is being added to the map on a daily basis and your contributions are not only helping give your company visibility, but it’s also adding value to others who might find that information useful when the need arises.