I was collating and categorizing the requests for India Post Data from the data.gov.in website 'Suggestions' section and where possible, providing examples of how this data has been used across the world. Additionally, I was thinking of use-cases for the 3 datasets that the department has already made open - namely those related to Philately and Speed Posts.
Thejesh and others who are interested in post-offices, I was wondering if you have any thoughts on these? Requests for data from data.gov.in 1. *Geo-referenced Post Office locations:* – Currently, the India Post website <http://indiapost.gov.in> provides an option to search for a post office by state, district, pincode or office-name. It would be helpful to provide geo-referenced search results, which can help users locate the nearest post-office. For e.g, the State of Oklahama’s Open Data Portal provides a map of all post-offices<https://data.ok.gov/Local-Government/Oklahoma-Post-Offices-Map/99xk-hg9g>. This service can be further enhanced by providing the Opening and Closing Time of the Post Office and the various services it provides. Additionally, adding the date of establishment of the post office would help in correlating development indicators and rise of communication network in the country, thus making the case for Post Offices stronger. To cite, a developer in the US has used similar data to map the spread of post offices across the country. The video can be found here<file:///C:/Users/AC/Documents/1.%09http:/flowingdata.com/2011/08/09/us-post-offices-spreading-over-time-1700-to-1900/>. 2. *Geo referenced Post Box locations:* Currently, there is no information on the location of post-boxes across the country. This proves inconvenient to users of post-boxes who have to search for them in obscure locations. Currently, such data is being crowd-sourced by two different developers in India - http://code.thejeshgn.com/kannu and https://keralapostbox.crowdmap.com/. An international example is http://wherepost.ca/. However, if this data is already available with the India Post Department, it would help to make it open. 3. *Pincode Boundary Maps:* Currently, a user cannot find the area that a Pincode covers. A regularly updated boundary map of pincodes in any of the Open Data formats (e.g. KML, GPX, GML, GeoJSON) would be helpful for identifying pincodes based on address. Such data can also lead to various interesting applications such as “Popular places based on pincode” (requested by a user on data.gov.in) Datasets made open by India Post on data.gov.in *4. **Speed Post Data:* Currently, the India Post Department has made one dataset open on data.gov.in regarding Speed Post services in India. This has details of prices for sending a document / merchandise by speed post to various international locations. 5. *Philately Data:* Currently, the India Post Department has made open two datasets related to philately on data.gov.in. These are a. List of Post Offices having Philatelic Counters - http://www.data.gov.in/dataset/list-post-offices-having-philatelic-counters b.List of Philatelic Bureaux - http://www.data.gov.in/dataset/list-philatelic-bureaux A mobile application can be created for philately lovers, which overlays the data on these post offices with the data on the stamps available at these locations. -- Communications & Technology Officer, Accountability Initiative <http://www.accountabilityindia.in/>, Centre for Policy Research <http://cprindia.org/> -- For more details about this list http://datameet.org/discussions/ --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "datameet" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
