Posts Tagged ‘mail’
Tech Evangelists To Meet in DC to Figure Out the Future of the Postal Service
And debate whether it even has a future at all
The conference will highlight how social networks and electronic communications continue to reshape the role of mail. Participants include Vint Cerf, Google’s “chief Internet evangelist,” and Jeff Jarvis, a blogger and journalism educator who has asked whether the Postal Service is even necessary anymore. Plenty of postal advocates will also be on hand, including members of a panel who have suggested post offices start selling gift cards and other retail items.
The goal is to discuss how snail mail might be saved, through dramatic structural changes or methods like privatization.
The USPS is on track to lose about $7 billion during the current fiscal year, the . With that hemorrhaging unlikely to stop anytime soon, it’s unlikely any investors would want to buy it.
John Callan, a mailing industry consultant who is organizing the meeting, told the Washington Post that the USPS is already working to address its current problems, but outsiders might have some useful ideas for its long-term future.
The meeting will also review what foreign postal services are doing — like sent via text, and scanning all mail into .
Eventually, postal services may be more useful for a much broader purpose than delivering coupons and J. Crew catalogs. The mail’s unparalleled ability to reach everyone, everywhere could be useful for a host of services — delivering drugs in case of a disease outbreak or bioterrorism, for instance. Or in neighborhoods. Or playing a role in the delivery and maintenance of nationwide broadband services ... the list goes on. For those reasons, at least, it could be well worth saving.
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Finland Launching National Pilot Program To Open and Scan All Snail Mail
Is online delivery a viable future for inconvenient old paper mail?
In the program, the volunteers will have images of all their letters viewable on a computer or phone, and then optionally physically delivered later on. The postman will still arrive twice a week to deliver the scanned letters, as well as any packages. Additionally, the postal service will filter out junk mail for the volunteers, essentially adding a spam filter to physical mail.
Itella, the state-owned company that operates Finland's postal service, has vowed that employees will not read the letters, that all sorting and opening will occur in specially secured facilities, and that employees will sign strict confidentiality agreements. 126 families and 20 businesses have already signed up for the service, which will begin on April 12th.
Itella stresses this program is only an experiment designed to discover what types of snail-mail the Finnish people feel comfortable receiving in this fashion. However, despite the small size, experimental nature, and high security of the program, some Finish citizens have already begun drawing comparisons between Itella and Communist-regime security services.
A similar service, , already operates commercially in the US, and claims to serve tens of thousands of users. Whether Itella can replicate Earth Class Mail's success remains to be seen. But given the high level of technical savvy amongst the Finnish population, as well that citizenry's more robust trust in the responsibility of their government, Itella's scanning program may very well be the future of mail.
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