Today we welcome ....

.... five new countries and territories, and we say goodbye to one. The net number of countries and territories in the world without a postal code system increases by four.

Did you know? Had you noticed? When I asked two days ago at a speech at Post*Expo in Copenhagen, none of the 50 or so participants admitted to having any clue about it.

Today we're waving goodbye to The Netherlands Antilles. We're welcoming Curaçao and Sint Maarten as largely independent territories within the Kingdom of The Netherlands (as Aruba now is); and Bonaire, Sint Eustatius and Saba as special municipalities within The Netherlands.

How many weeks, months, years or decades will it take before organisations reflect these changes within their databases, processes and customer-facing systems? After all, Saint Martin and Saint Barthélemy (2007) are still largely unknown and unused; Serbia and Montenegro are still far too often lumped together, though they split in 2006; and some organisations still have Yugoslavia as a country, though that died a death in 2003.

Manage your own country list

Twice in the past couple of weeks, when pointing at errors in country lists, organisations have let me know that they will be "looking for a new source" for that list. Far too many organisations use incomplete and unsuitable lists provided by organisations such as the World Bank, United Nations or the ISO. These organisations have their own reasons and imperatives for creating and maintaining lists, which will not be the same as yours, and they must adjust lists to political pressures which rarely reflect reality on the ground.

If you need to keep your country list up to date, and you do, then manage your own. Any country or territory which has a de facto existence needs to be on your list. Though Guadeloupe is part of France, it's geographical location means that it needs to be listed separately to ensure correct address management. Saba may become part of The Netherlands but it won't use the same postal code system or, indeed the same currency. Kosovo must be on your lists because of the linguistic, cultural and addressing differences, regardless of how you stand on its relationship to Serbia.

If you can't rely on the list you're using now, use your own. I'm looking forward to Sint Eustatius and its new neighbours appearing on your website form dropdown very soon.