Free the postal code!

Last friday the developers meeting of HNS.dev took place in Amsterdam. The goal of the New Voting Foundation is collecting data of politicians (i.e. their standpoints, speeches, and voting behaviour) in a clear, standardised way. One of the points of discussion was that postal codes are not free in The Netherlands. For a person or organisation to use a recent version of the postal code database, an amount must be paid. Participants agreed that government information must be free accessable. Therefore an online petition has been set up to ask attention from politicians and government.

A recent postal code database is of great value to the New Voting Foundation. With the help of postal codes, petitions can be linked to a location. For example, when inhabitants of a certain region sign a petition about the local authorities building plans, the use of postal codes can reveal important data. The use of postal codes can contribute to information gathering as well, for example regional statistics of voting behaviour and political views can be made. However, the newest postal codes are not available for free.

The New Voting Foundation is not the only organisation interested in a free postal code database. Commercial webstores en online market places can use postal codes in the delivery of products to their clients. Also other non-profit organisation are forced to pay for the services of TNT.

One must agree that it is strange that 'we citizens' have to pay for information that is ours. Local authorities, paid with tax money, hand over the postal code information to TNT. In turn TNT offers it as a paid service to their clients. It appears some authorities even buy the information again from TNT.

The Netherlands is not the only country coping with this problem. In other countries like the UK an organisation called FreeThePostcode is protesting against the same issue.

Freely available postal codes are each day becoming a greater value to our economy. If you agree, fill in the petition on http://www.petities.nl/petitie/bevrijd_de_postcode/

You can also support this initiative by way of crowdsourcing the postal codes.