USPS Office of Inspector General

Change begets change, said Charles Dickens amid the upheavals of the Industrial Revolution. The same could be said of the Logistics Revolution, which is still roiling the landscape with no signs of slowing down.

Worksharing – U.S. Postal Service program of reduced postage rates to mailers that take on mail preparation or distribution tasks it would otherwise have to do – was once an innovative idea; but it is now the norm in postal operations. Indeed, 85 percent of the market-dominant mail volume the Postal Service processes is workshared mail. Mailers perform everything from applying barcodes to entering mail closer to the destination in return for lower rates.

With package delivery a growing part of the business, it’s no surprise the U.S. Postal Service has focused efforts on improving tracking and visibility for parcel services. PASS – the Passive Adaptive Scanning System used to scan packages and identify delivery routes – represents both the promise and pitfalls of major investments in this area.