3 Reasons why the accurate addressing of SA Rural areas is important.

                  [1] South African rural areas are often neglected or completely ignored by the rest of the country despite a significant portion of SA’s population still residing in these areas.  Statistics South Africa, reported recently that slightly over four-fifths (80.1%) of South African households lived in formal dwellings, followed by 13.6% in informal dwellings, and 5.5% in traditional dwellings [2]. Rural address allocation is in the midst of being completed for large portions of the country by the South African Post office and its partners. This includes location details, registering villages within areas, identifying sections and dwellings in villages, capturing resident details such as the head of each dwelling, and postal details (post office, routing, postcode). Here are three important reasons why the accurate addressing of these rural areas are so critically important for South African citizens living in these areas: Firstly, its voting season and voter registration took place in January with general elections expected to take place in May 2019. Without an accurate SA address, voters cannot register on the voter’s roll. To complicate addressing efforts, many voting districts change shape due to various geographical, population and political changes that take place between elections [3]. Voting districts must also be aligned to new boundaries determined by the Municipal Demarcation Board [4]. Secondly, an address provides the basic tool in planning for municipalities. Without this basic data point, municipalities struggle to align budgeting and project implementation with strategic priorities affecting much-needed infrastructure development and basic service delivery. Lastly, residents residing in rural areas are becoming increasingly more important as recipients...

South African suburbs and postcodes. Finding the needle in a stack of needles.

                South African addresses have several functions including a means of physically locating a property or a building; for FICA and Know Your Customer compliance; as parameters in statistics collection and marketing segmentation, to name a few [1].  Addresses are still the most widely accepted representation of a location and essential data elements to an address are accurate suburbs and respective postal codes. We note on that on average there are approximately 50 changes every month to the South African suburb-postcode table file, of approximately 16 000 records, which includes both street and box related postcodes. Of these changes, approximately 80% are new suburb additions and on average there are four suburbs per postcode, with a maximum of 210. With an average number of streets per suburb of 30, these 50 changes per month to the suburb-postcode file, potentially affects up to 1 500 streets per month (including box addresses). The potential number of actual delivery points affected is within the range of 3-10 times this number (4 500 – 15 000), not taking into consideration multi-unit complexes or buildings with multiple letterboxes which would significantly increase this number [2]. SA postcode and suburb data were collected from several publically-available lookup websites as common sources for these data.  The total number of records and accuracy of these data were then compared to IDATA’s SA Suburb & Postal Code tables.  IDATA’s tables are the most current and accurate in the country as they are actively researched in conjunction with our client companies, municipalities, property developers, estate agents, and the South African Post Office (SAPO) on an ongoing...

Data breaches…. unwrapping the unsanctioned

        [1] South Africa recently suffered its largest data breach as the sensitive and private information of estimated 30 million personal records, dead or alive, with a South African ID number (13 digit identity number) were leaked on the Internet [2]. The breach contains‚ among other things; ID numbers‚ ages‚ locations‚ marital status‚ occupations‚ estimated income‚ physical addresses and cell phone numbers. It remains unclear what the source of the information was [3]. South Africa is implementing its Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA), which restricts how companies handle personal data to safeguard individuals from security breaches. A new report by IBM Security and Ponemon Institute finds that the average cost of a data breach in South Africa is R 32.36 million – a 12% increase from 2016. The study found that these data breaches cost companies on average R 1,632 per lost or stolen record [4]. Top factors that contributed to the increase of cost of a data breach in South Africa include compliance failures and the extensive use of mobile platforms for companies that embrace Bring Your Own Device for its employees. The danger of the digital world is that attacks or data theft can happen unnoticed [5]. Cyber-attacks are getting more and more sophisticated and it can often take a few years for a company to realise it has been hacked. On average, local companies took 155 days to identify a breach, and 44 additional days to contain a breach once discovered [6]. A data breach currently unravelling in the news is that of Uber, who disclosed this past Tuesday that hackers had...
POPIA’s draft regulation….any surprises?

POPIA’s draft regulation….any surprises?

The commencement date of the Protection of Personal Information Act 4 (POPIA) of 2013 is expected to be announced during the course of 2017, following which organisations will have 12 months to become POPI compliant or “regulator ready”. Draft guidelines have been released for industry comment and can be read by clicking here. Based on this draft, the DMASA (Direct Marketing Association of SA) is concerned that the new proposed POPI Act will significantly affect business as we know it in the direct marketing sector. The proposed act in its current form is likely to lead to significant losses, not only in revenue, but also in jobs. The DMASA has established an online survey for input to make a firm representation to the regulator as to why the new POPI Act needs to be revised. The following have been indicated as steps that organisations can start taking towards the transition of being “regulator ready” are: Privacy training and awareness; Deployment of a governance and data privacy target operating model for sustainable data privacy compliance; Privacy policy development and organisation policy review; Incident management plan to be developed and in place and Personal information inventory. There are various efficient and cost-effective “quick wins” which organisations could initiate and implement to commence their journey to being “regulator ready”. These quick wins should ideally be initiated within an organisation’s high-risk areas as far as personal information is concerned. (2) It’s important to note that POPI is not about jail time and fines. The often quoted R10m and/or 10 years imprisonment provision is a maximum penalty and only applies if you: hinder, obstruct or...

Street renaming in SA and why it’s not small pocket change – part 2

          Source [1] Part one of this article showcased that it’s certainly not small pocket change when it comes to the ongoing cost of renaming streets in South Africa.  The further impact of this will now be explored in part two of this article where we look at changes to South African Post Codes and Suburbs which affects addressing in SA. As previously discussed, there is an ongoing number of place name changes being proposed by the South African Geographical Names Council [2].  In addition to this, municipalities (eight metropolitan municipalities, 44 district municipalities and 226 local municipalities) and other property development bodies in the country affect the naming and access to existing and newly developed streets, where individuals reside and businesses operate from.  None of these bodies is regulated by any central governmental authority and is effectively autonomous and independent of each other.  This creates problems in managing and maintaining customer databases where physical and postal addresses are used. Therefore, the effective management of the SA address, composed of streets, suburbs and postcodes, needs to happen reactively.  That is to say that SA individuals and businesses are responsible for informing their service providers of changes to their address that they are aware of, or new street and suburb place names in that the of new residential, commercial and industrial land developments. Changes to the suburb name or relevant postcode for a given street name affects mail delivery directly but also a host of other public and private services indirectly, including verification of proof of residence which is of critical importance for FICA and financial Know-Your-Customer compliance. IDATA...

The Direct results of Direct Mail

The preliminary results from the United States Postal Service’s recently conducted “Future of the Mail” survey of 1,500 businesses signalled optimism about the future of mail. Among other findings, 69% of large business customers are engaged in direct mail activities. Three in ten businesses indicated they plan to spend more in the future on mail, not less; this number was even higher among large businesses. Across businesses of all sizes, the primary objectives for increasing direct mail are to acquire and/or retain more customers.[1] Even in a digital world, there’s something direct mail can do that you’ll never be able to accomplish digitally.[2]It can be addressed and unaddressed and still be targeted. With an enhanced database you can set up customer profiles and keep up with their growing relationship with you. Below are some of the biggest reasons why Direct Mail produces results. Direct Mail loves e-commerce. It has the following direct effect on customers: Consumers don’t just open the mail and read, they interact with it too. Offering multiple devices and ways for a consumer to get in touch with you such as QR Codes, PURL’s and Augmented Reality is a great way to ensure a response. They can select the option they feel most comfortable with. 92% were driven to online or digital activity 87% reported to make online purchases 86% connected with businesses 54% engaged with social media 43% downloaded something Millennials are receptive to Direct Mail Millennials are concerned about their experience with your company. They want quality service and a great experience. So how does this translate to direct mail? Finding a way to create...