Proposed Data Standards - Main Points

1. Proposed Data Standards- Main Points 1

2. Agenda • Background • Scope • Customer Name • Addresses • Free Text • Issues • Next Steps 2

3. Background 3

4. Customer Name • Individual • Name Set • Organisation • Name Set 4

5. Customer Name • Standard proposed for new/changed data: • Upper case proposed to be used in all cases • One space to be used between each separate word • No leading spaces to be used • Fada’s and other accents over letters are not currently supported by the Retail Market Design • No apostrophes or other punctuation marks to be used 5

6. Customer Addresses - Overall Principles • Up to 3 Addresses are stored for each customer: • Meter Point • Notification • Technical Contact • Each of these can be in one of 2 formats: • Street/Townland address • PO Box address (except Meter Point Address) 6

7. Customer Addresses – Overall Principles (contd.) 7

8. Customer Addresses – Overall Principles • Notification Address is the customer’s correspondence address where different from the meter point address • It is mandatory where a new Notification Address is being added or changes are being made to an existing notification address • To change an existing notification address, the whole address – containing the changes - must be resent by the Supplier 8

9. Customer Addresses – Overall Principles • Notification Addresses are not intended to be used to store ancillary information • The ‘Care of’ field is only used in cases where someone other than the person/organisation registered as the Customer is responsible for the account • Incorrect structure on Notification Addresses leads to difficulty delivering Connection Agreements, Quotations and invoices to the Customer 9

10. Address Structure 10

11. Address Data • Standard proposed for new/changed data: • Street field is Mandatory for all Street Type Addresses • When using the overflow fields prior to the street priority should be given to Address line 1 over Address line 2 • When using the overflow fields after the street field priority should be given to Address line 4 over Address line 5. 11

12. Address Data – Unit/Apt Number • Standards proposed for new/changed data: • Do not use the House Number Field to store this data • An address may have both house number and Unit/Apt. number • Upper case where using Characters • Leading characters are only permitted where they relate specifically to that component of the address e.g. identifying the Unit/Apt. within a block or the type of Unit/Apt. / block that is being identified • Characters after the number should usually relate to part of the number of the Unit/Apt. e.g. Unit 115A Street field is Mandatory for all Street Type Addresses • When using the overflow fields prior to the street priority should be given to Address line 1 over Address line 2 • When using the overflow fields after the street field priority should be given to Address line 4 over Address line 5. 12

13. Address Data – Address Line 1 • Standard proposed for new/changed data: • Address Line 1 should take preference over Address line 2 for storing information prior to house number and street where only one of the Address overflows are needed • Used primarily for extra address information e.g. House or building name • Use Upper case characters • No leading spaces • One space between individual words • No apostrophes or other punctuation marks to be used. • Avoid use of abbreviations where possible except for acceptable ones where necessary for space reasons 13

14. Address Data – Address Line 2 & Address Line 4 • Standard proposed for new/changed data: • Use Upper case characters • No leading spaces • One space between individual words • No apostrophes or other punctuation marks to be used. • Avoid use of abbreviations where possible except for recommended ones where necessary for space reasons 14

15. Address Data – House Number • Proposed rules for population of House Number: • House Number can be applied to all types of premises – Residential and Commercial. • Never place house number in the street field • House Number should be primarily numeric. Leading letter characters are to be avoided unless they are relevant to the house number as in the example below • Do not put unit, flat or apartment number information in this field. Use Unit/Apt. Number for this purpose • No leading spaces 15

16. Address Data – Street Field • Standard proposed for new/changed data: • The Street field would be better named the ‘Street/Townland’ field. It is used in most cases to store the information in relation to which Street the premise is physically located on. Where the address is rural the Townland or local area information is placed here • Street must be provided for all Address Types in Street format (whether Meter Point, Notification, and Technical). (All data) 16

17. Address Data – Street Field • Proposed rules for the population of Street field: • Do not put House or Unit/Apt. Number information in this field • Use Upper case characters • No leading spaces • One space between individual words • No apostrophes or other punctuation marks to be used. • Avoid use of abbreviations where possible except for standard ones where necessary for space reasons 17

18. Address Data – Address Line 5 • Standard proposed for new/changed data: • Used primarily for extra address information after the Street E.g. where this will not all fit in Address Line 4 or where an extra line is required in the Address • Use Upper case characters • No leading spaces • One space between individual words • No apostrophes or other punctuation marks to be used. • Avoid use of abbreviations where possible except for recommended ones where necessary for space reasons 18

19. Address Data – Postal Code • Standard proposed for new/changed data: • The current Dublin Post codes e.g. Dublin 4, do not need to go in this field but should be placed in the City field 19

20. Address Data – City Field • Standard proposed for all data: • If the address is in Ireland the City field must be provided • If the City is Dublin the area code can be added at the end of the text. E.g. Dublin 2 20

21. Address Data – City Field • Standard proposed for new/changed data: • Use Upper case characters • No leading spaces • No apostrophes or other punctuation marks to be used 21

22. Address Data – County -Ireland • Standard proposed for new/changed data: • If the Address is in the Republic of Ireland the County must be provided • This field must be in codified format 22

23. Address Data – Country • Standard proposed for new/changed data: • This field must be in codified format as specified in the Retail Market Design (Set to IE – Ireland in all cases on Meter Point Address 23

24. Notification Address • Standard proposed for all data: • The standards applying to Notification Address are the same as those for Meter Point address • To change an existing Notification Address, the whole address – containing the changes - must be resent by the Supplier • Do not send a partial Notification Address 24

25. Notification Address – C/O Name • Standard proposed for all data: • This field is only to be used in cases where someone other than the person/organisation registered as the Customer is responsible for administering the account e.g. a Carer if the customer is a residential customer or Accounts Representative if the customer is a commercial customer. 25

26. Notification Address – PO Box Type Address • Standard proposed for all data: • If sending a PO Box type address you must not also send a Street Type Address for the same Customer 26

27. Character Set • Currently does not allow Irish characters • New guidelines suggest that this may change due to national standards linked to legislation 27

28. Next Steps • Agree standards for existing • Agree standards for new • Add validations • Partial Address clean-up? 28