USPS Office of Inspector General

Is the U.S. Postal Service a business or a public service organization? Well, it’s actually both, and those overlapping – and sometimes conflicting – obligations have created major challenges for the agency over the years.

The U.S. Postal Service’s workforce demographics add an extra layer of challenges to an organization that already has plenty. We recently blogged about the Postal Service’s brain drain – the loss of institutional knowledge due to a large number of workers retiring. This week we look at the additional challenge of creating a robust corporate succession plan when nearly half of the Postal Service’s executives will be eligible to retire by 2015.

There’s no lack of opinions in Washington about what the U.S. Postal Service should do to get out of its precarious financial situation. Cut this, add that, restructure these, and so on. But what about the public? What do Americans want - expect - from the Postal Service?