A Gem Too Good to Pass Up

FOR THE PAST several months, a U.S. Postal Service mailer workgroup has been attempting to identify areas that could benefit most from capital investment.

The workgroup is overseen by the Mailers Technical Advisory Committee (MTAC), in response to a directive from the postmaster general’s Blue Ribbon Task Force.

The group noted early on that the market the postal service operates in today is vastly different from the one that existed at the time of postal reorganization. Unlike then, the postal service now faces competition from a number of electronic communications alternatives. These options have helped erode the communications market share that’s been enjoyed by the USPS.

To remain viable, the group concluded, the postal service must do all in its power to improve the value of mail as a medium of communication and commerce.

Key to stepping up mail’s value is upgrading the cost efficiency, reliability and consistency of mail service. To accomplish this, the group concluded that the USPS had to develop a comprehensive information management infrastructure.

Such a setup would let the postal service turn the millions of bits of data it collects each day into a stream of information that could be used to manage its business and improve the quality of mail service. The system also could provide mailers the information they have long sought to make more judicious use of mail as a commercial medium.

The MTAC workgroup has anguished for quite some time over how to shape this message to ensure that senior management and the postal Board of Governors would appreciate the great desire by mailers to support this project. With the appointment of William Henderson as postmaster general, it appears the group need anguish no more.

In his comments to the board at its June 30 meeting, the PMG clearly and succinctly laid out the rationale for investing in the project.

The postal service, he said, “is on a quest to put an information platform in place…that does three things. The first thing it does is provide information to customers about their mail.” With a track-and-trace capability, he noted, mailers will be able to “go in and look at their mail anytime they want.

“The second thing it will do,” Henderson told the governors, “is provide an activity-based accounting system, so that in a world where there is no monopoly and where the marketplace will have…real live accounting procedures,” everyone will know how much it costs to render mail services.

Finally, he said, “it will provide management with better operating information so it can make the kind of decisions…[that may] forestall the costs being spent today. The better the information, the more real-time you have it, the better management decisions you can make.”

An information management infrastructure, Henderson asserted, will afford the USPS “huge opportunities to save money.” There is no doubt that such a system, in his words, “will pay for itself.”

He added that development of this project was one of the top priorities suggested to managers in the postal service’s most recent Baldridge Total Quality Management assessment. As a result, those officials are committed to getting it done.

Hallelujah! Someone has seen the light! The shame of it all is that Henderson’s remarks have largely been overlooked by mailers and the postal media.

His acknowledgment of the need and his dedication to the building of this infrastructure, however, is probably the most important statement any postmaster general could have made. For without such an system in place, the postal service has no hope of surviving into the 21st century.

Mailers should do everything in their power to help Henderson and the postal board achieve this goal. No other single effort could do more to help ensure mailers the kind of universal, cost-efficient and reliable mail services they have ardently sought.

In July, the U.S. House of Representatives approved and sent to the Senate a multibillion-dollar Treasury/U.S. Postal Service appropriations bill limiting the USPS’ ability to enter into contracts with foreign postal services and to finance new non-postal-related services. The USPS, which receives nearly $71.2 million in supplemental funding in the measure, opposes the limitations. A major portion of the money, $68.7 million, is allocated to cover the cost of providing free mail for the blind and overseas voters, while the rest will repay the postal service for its handling of free and reduced-rate mail for nonprofits. The Senate, which has been considering a different version of the measure (S-2312), was not expected to act before this month.