The following is a perspective by AMMA postal commentator Gene Del Polito for Direct Magazine.
There's a great deal that's been said about the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) being on the cusp of "great change." Of course, what "great change" means to one person might be quite different from another. It's easy when talking about postal reform or postal transformation or reinventing the Postal Service to lapse into the kind of unidimensional thinking that's most clearly manifested by the declaration: "All that ills the Postal Service could be solved simply if it were________________." Time and again, postal watchers have heard that blank filled with words such as "commercialized," "corporatized," or "privatized." "Take my special patented medicine," the postal snake-oil salesmen would say, "and you'll experience a miraculous cure."
According to the Postal Service's chief marketing officer, Allen Kane, immediately upon hearing of any such magical elixir you should grab firm hold of your wallet. "Changing the nation's postal system," Kane recently told a gathering of AMMA conferees, "is not as simple as the waving of a legislative hand." Getting the U.S. Postal Service positioned to better serve the nation's future postal needs, he said, requires an appreciation of the much more complex, multi-dimensional nature of what simply is called "postal reform."
The environment in which the Postal Service exists, Kane said, is not a simple one. The nature of the competition that the Postal Service must face today is more complex. The technological revolution of the 1990s has offered customers, competitors, and the Postal Service a varied array of instruments and tools that can be used to substitute or to complement traditional ink and paper messaging. In addition, the demands made upon and the skills possessed by postal employees have changed over time, even though the historical posturing of "labor versus management" has hardly been changed. Finally, Kane noted, the Postal Service remains a closely regulated government enterprise. While the Postal Service's operating environment has changed, the nature of the regulation that governs the Postal Service remains as it has been since the time of 1971 reorganization.
How, and to what extent, Kane asked, must change be manifested in each of these five dynamics of the postal marketplace, i.e., customers, competition, technology. regulation, and employees? Changing only one facet, he warned, without a good appreciation of its effects on the others will change postal reform into a disappointing exercise.
In a sense, Kane was saying that the Postal Service's mission needs to be re-appraised with a careful eye toward a rapidly changing marketplace. What are the nation's enduring postal needs? What should the Postal Service be expected to provide in the way of mail service, communication services, or other services that have been historically tied to its governmental character? And what should be expected of the Postal Service as an employer? These, he noted, are all part of the dynamics that should shape our nation's perception and plans for a Postal Service entering the 21st century.
So...how long will it take us to divine answers to these many questions in a way that will ensure for our nation the provision of universal, cost-efficient, and reliable postal services for as long as a postal infrastructure is needed? That's the question that should be driving a debate involving postal leaders, customers, employees, and legislators. With the exception of one voice crying in the wilderness, the silence has been deafening.