USPS Office of Inspector General

Coupons, sales, two-for-one offers, and loyalty programs are just a few of the countless types of promotions businesses use to move inventory or get consumers to try new products and services. 

Commercial enterprises offer deals, specials, or rewards programs from time to time because … they often work. Chances are one of these marketing techniques recently influenced your buying decisions.

As the ever-lengthening election season gears up, you can expect to receive more political mail. Political mail – also called campaign mail – provides a nice revenue lift for the U.S. Postal Service during election years. In fiscal year 2014, the Postal Service earned more than $317 million from political mail.

Management consulting guru Peter Drucker famously said of business management, “What gets measured gets done.” And the U.S. Postal Service seems to follow that maxim, using performance indicators and other types of measurements to improve performance in many aspects of its operations. But we recently found it could benefit from more such measurement in one area – its Premier Office Program.

In the sage words of Yogi Berra, “If you don’t know where you’re going, you will wind up somewhere else.” So, where does the U.S. Postal Service want to go? Well, by 2016 it hopes to end up a lot closer to solvency. And to get there, it developed the Delivering Results, Innovation, Value and Efficiency (DRIVE) management process.

Reshaping a postal network doesn’t happen overnight. Especially one built to handle mainly letters and flats and not the tremendous anticipated growth in parcels. The Postal Service is attempting to tackle realignment in two phases, playing out over 4 years.

What if your credit card company told you: “You will charge a million dollars on your credit card during your life; please enclose the million dollars in your next bill payment. It’s the responsible thing to do.” Doesn’t seem quite right, does it?

Innovation is a hallmark of the digital revolution yet for many companies innovation remains hard. The popular book The Innovator’s Dilemma notes that companies often either ignore a disruptive technology or if they recognize it, they try to manage it like their traditional business. The book says companies need to recognize the disruptive technology and then set up a separate unit to manage it.

Wow, how time flies. Five years ago we launched our first blog as a way to engage stakeholders and solicit input on important postal topics. We haven’t stopped blogging since – 282 and counting (and more than 670,000 views!). A lot has changed in that 5 years – not necessarily for the U.S. Postal Service but in the social media realm.

Last month, the U.S. Postal Service awarded the contract for a pilot program for a cloud-based identity management system called the Federal Cloud Credential Exchange (FCCX). Using a closed communications network, or "digital pipelines", the Postal Service will deliver digital packets ("envelopes") of secure identity data between government agencies and private or public identity providers.

Until the early 1970s, citizens applying for passports had to wait in long lines at one of 10 U.S. Department of State passport offices or at a federal or state court. The traveling public was not happy about the inconvenient locations of these offices or the hours’ long wait to submit an application, and they let their elected officials know. The solution allowed post offices to accept and process passport applications on behalf of the State Department. The passports were then mailed directly to the applicants.