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Following is the question by the Hon Sin Chung-kai and a written reply by the Secretary for Economic Development and Labour, Mr Stephen Ip, in the Legislative Council today (July 2):
Question :
In response to my question at the Council meeting on January 12, 2000, the Government advised that the Hong Kong Post Office ("HKPO") was examining the introduction of a postcode system. Moreover, according to a document entitled "100 Projects for Better Services 2002/2003" issued by HKPO, it would propose a postcode structure for Hong Kong and formulate strategies for the launching of a postcode system in 2002/2003. In this connection, will the Government inform this Council:
(a) of the findings of the study on the introduction of a postcode system; and the timetable for releasing the details of the study findings;
(b) of the details and progress of the formulation of the postcode structure; apart from postal services, whether the postcode will be applicable to services provided by other government departments or organizations; if so, of the departments and kinds of organizations which will take the lead in adopting the postcode;
(c) whether it will co-operate with other organizations to develop and provide other value-added services on the basis of the postcode system; and
(d) of the details, timing and the amount of money required to implement strategies for the launching of the postcode system?
Reply :
Madam President,
The Government has completed the study on the introduction of a postcode system. Generally speaking, the objective of introducing a postcode system is to improve the efficiency of the postal operation so that letters can be sorted to their delivery sequence, thus improving the read rate of the Optical Character Recognition System used in letter sorting and obviating the need for a postman to sort the letters before delivery.
The postcode adopted in overseas countries consists typically of five to seven digits, denoting the buildings by district and by street. Our study concludes that assigning a postcode to each building in Hong Kong will not achieve such benefits. Instead a separate postcode has to be assigned to each address (i.e. each unit in a building).
Against this background, we have the following constraints in terms of designing the code:
(i) Hong Kong is a city with high density development. To assign a separate postcode to each of the 2.5 million postal addresses in Hong Kong, the postcode of Hong Kong could involve up to 15 digits;
(ii) a possible alternative is to have a postcode with random numbers. But such a postcode gives no indication of the actual address;
(iii) to allocate a separate postcode to each of the 2.5 million postal addresses in Hong Kong, we need a postcode with seven random numbers; and
(iv) to help detect input errors, an additional 'checksum digit' will have to be included in the postcode. Consequently, the possible postcode would have to contain eight random digits.
The Economic Services Panel of this Council agreed at its meeting in June 2000 that the use of the postcode should be on a voluntary basis. Given the constraints on the postcode design, we consider that:
(i) the use of the postcode by business organizations will depend on their line of business, the volume of mail they handle, their need for address data management and whether they have the necessary IT infrastructure. The use of the postcode by the general public will also influence these organizations' use of the postcode. If the usage among the general public is low, we could not expect the postcode to be widely adopted by commercial organizations;
(ii) a postcode with eight random digits is not user-friendly to the public because a person wishing to use the postcode would have to memorize not only his or her own postcode, but also those of the recipients of the mail. It is likely that people will be inclined to use the postal address as at present.
Having the majority of letters postcoded is a pre-requisite to achieving the benefits of introducing a postcode in Hong Kong. In view of the constraints above, we do not expect popular adoption of an eight-digit postcode in Hong Kong. In addition, the Post Office will replace the existing letter sorting machine in 2005 to achieve efficiency in the sorting of mail. The Optical Character Recognition System of the new letter sorting machine will have a better read rate, and reduce correspondingly the benefits to be obtained from the adoption of the postcode. Bearing in mind the above factors, we consider that it is not suitable to introduce a postcode system in Hong Kong for the time being.
Ends/Wednesday, July 2, 2003
Issued at HKT 16:49
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