I’ve specialised in international data and its management for 30 years now, and everything I learn (which I still do daily) enforces the fact that the foundation anybody needs for successful international data management is knowledge. Knowledge, that is, of the world, its systems, conventions, languages, cultures and ways. Knowing how to code brilliantly is unhelpful unless you know what you need to achieve, and knowledge is essential when choosing a partner to help you with your international data quality.
I recently
came across a provider of international address validation which claimed to
support “250+ countries”. Defining what a country is is not as straightforward
as you might suppose. It depends on who you are, where you are, and your
political background. There are unrecognized de facto countries and
non-existent de jure countries. Even so, however liberal your
definition, you would not get anywhere near 250. If you’re counting the more
accurate “countries and territories” then you’d get closer, but 250 remains
claim inflation. There was a time when every address validation company was
trying to outdo the others with country support number inflation. One supported
240 so the next claimed 250 and one even went for 300 plus, which is just
ludicrous. This had calmed down, so I rather hope that this new claim is not the
start of a new round of unsupportable claims. The company claiming 250+
includes uninhabited rocks (they may have an ISO code, but there are no
addresses to validate) and non-existent political entities such as Antarctica.
Check the claims in more detail, and they become more preposterous – they claim
validation to postal code level even for countries and territories which do not
have postal codes.
I would
feel better about seeing claims like this if I thought that most people dealing
with international data were well enough informed to be able to go to this
company and say “you claim to support more countries than there are, how can we
be expected to trust you with our data?” This wouldn’t have to happen often for
providers of these services to sober up and start telling the truth. The
company concerned claims 2800+ customers, including many large companies which
should understand addresses. I understand the pressures that companies put
themselves under to market and sell their products, but claims need to be based
on truth. I did contact the company to ask about this – I received no response.
If more people working with international data would educate themselves better
in … international data… then that data would be better managed, cleaner and
better governed. Let’s hope that things improve in the next 30 years.
