Adapting the Post Office To the Digital Age

Hugh Pickens writes "Paul B. Carroll and Chunka Mui write in the Washington Post that with projected deficits through 2020 of $238 billion, the debate over potential changes at the US Postal Service is like a fight over the dessert bar on the Titanic: email has already supplanted letters, more people will send money via PayPal rather than mail checks, people will download their movies and books, check their bills online, and receive information about their investments electronically. Delivery volume for first-class mail fell 22 percent from 1998 through 2007, tumbled an additional 13 percent last year and was down 3 percent in the first half of this year despite heavy mailings from the Census Bureau. USPS's future lies in things that need to be delivered physically: shoes, computers and other objects, and the USPS has assets that could let it take on UPS and FedEx. 'USPS needs to start with the future and work backward to the present,' write Carroll and Mui. 'It needs to forecast volumes for all types of its business five, 10 and 15 years out and design a business model that will thrive under those scenarios. Only then can it figure out what radical changes need to be made now.'"

Comments

Address people, not houses

[TheRaven64]

The thing that I really hate about traditional mail is that it goes to my house, not to me. When I move house, I have to (pay to) set up a redirection and then stuff where people got the address slightly wrong needs forwarding manually. Big companies can set up a P/O Box that forwards to their physical location. Why not to this for everyone? In the UK, the post code and house name or number are enough to uniquely identify every house in the country. Why not make the system identify people by a short code (or something like a domain name) instead? That way, when I move house, I don't need to tell people my new address unless they are actually visiting me - people who are just writing to me can keep using the old address.

Just now?!?

[alangerow]

Company realizes it needs to think about the future and plan for it. News at 11.