Keeping Secrets At The USPS
The Postal Rate Commission will decide soon whether the U.S. Postal Service can keep certain information about its international mail operations secret.
The USPS made the request while responding to a PRC request for guidance on what its first report to Congress on international mail service should cover. Congress ordered annual reports on international mail operations last fall when it passed a law giving the State Department the authority to negotiate international postal agreements instead of the USPS.
The USPS claims information about its international operations secret because it is considered it to be “commercially sensitive,” suggesting that the data could be used by delivery service rivals United Parcel Service, Atlanta, and Federal Express, Memphis, TN.
Specifically the USPS wants to keep detailed reports on two of its services to Canada (Valuepost/Canada and bulk letter service to Canada) as well as the “mail flows between the U.S. and any particular country” secret. Those reports “should not be made public,” the USPS said.
It also noted in earlier proceedings involving domestic mail the PRC “agreed that volume data showing mail flows between identifiable places is commercially sensitive and has not required production of data at that level.”
The Advertising Mail Marketing Association, the only industry group to file a response so far, told PRC that it doesn’t need additional information because data it’s received from the postal service over the years established “compellingly that the postal service has been scrupulous in excluding” the costs of international mail operations from its domestic operations [and that] international mail, taken as a whole, covers its direct and aggregate short run variable costs.”
FedEx and UPS, which have to the end of the week to comment on the postal service’s secrecy request, both urged the PRC to thoroughly examine its international operations to make sure they are not subsidized by domestic mailers. If no cross subsidy is found, UPS said, “users who pay the rates cannot complain and unfair competition will be avoided.”
FedEx said the domestic costs of international mail accounted for “about 42 percent of all international mail costs, or about $532 million out of $1.2 billion in fiscal 1997.”
Those costs, FedEx noted include operations of the international affairs office in postal headquarters and international travel by its workers; USPS participation in various international postal organizations, including the Universal Postal Union, and the technical support of postal facilities in developing countries.
