Jack Mayer, President
Lifetime Addressing, Inc.

No other institution had the capacity to transmit such a large volume of information on such a regular basis over such an enormous geographical expanse." One postal historian used these words to describe the early years of the post office when it had a preeminent role in "shaping the pattern of everyday life." These words now describe the Internet. Nevertheless, regardless of how much mail can be diverted to other forms of communication, there will always be a need for a reliable, cost-effective service for the delivery of physical mail from one party to another.

Recent USPS data indicates that $1.5 billion in postal costs are attributable annually to undeliverable as addressed mail. A wide variety of mailer costs associated with UAA mail are estimated to be a significant multiple of the $1.5 billion. About 5.4 billion pieces of mail were undeliverable, representing 3% of mail volume.

Despite the billions of dollars spent on automation, development of national addressing standards and mailer compliance initiatives, there are two fundamental problems which continue to inflate mail processing costs and degrade the overall efficiency of postal service – the use by mailers of obsolete addresses and poor "address quality."

These problems have a common solution: transition to a system of lifetime postal addresses replacing the use of physical addresses by mailers, linked to a secure database of each recipient’s current physical address. In addition to reducing postal overhead and mailer costs, it would create permanent deliverability of mail and profound benefits to all users of the postal system, comparable to innovations in other forms of communication that now link senders and recipients "anytime/anywhere."

Regardless of the increasing sophistication of address correction and update services available they are inherently remedial in nature in that they merely correct problems created by the use of physical addresses, while modern information technology allows a solution to the underlying problems.

An address on a piece of mail is a delivery instruction to the postal service - to transport the item to a physical address or delivery point. Before the development of automated sorting and barcoding the address, as a delivery instruction, had to be readable both by the postal clerks who hand-sorted the mail and by the carriers who delivered it.

Advances in technology leading to the machine-readability of numbers and letters make it unnecessary for the "address" needed in the sorting process to be the same as the "address" to which the carrier refers as a delivery instruction. The latter needs to be comprehensible to a human while the former does not.

Redesigning the data content of an address from identification of the delivery point to identification of the recipient could be easily accomplished through adaptation of existing technology. However, it cannot be achieved by further automation of a process driven by mailer-provided physical addresses.

An all-numerical postal address could also be utilized as a lifetime identifier for telephone service and other forms of communication. Just as lifetime phone numbers and call forwarding provide anytime/anywhere service, an individual could program an all-numerical postal address into the communications network and make it possible to route other forms of communication through a single identifier.

The postal service is unique among service providers since it serves all people. It could leverage this advantage by being the entity whose customer database would enable maintenance of lifetime contact in all forms of electronic communication. This is a significant strategic avenue for the postal service on which it has yet to embark. If it did so, however, it would enable the postal service to regain the preeminence it enjoyed when it was the only communications link between people.

Myriad strategic plans, press releases, speeches and testimony by postal officials express their desire to achieve breakthrough advances in productivity and cost-saving. By contrast, no private sector entity could represent that it was attempting breakthrough improvements without eliminating the overhead associated with perpetuation of obsolete technology. E-mail service had not been in widespread existence very long before the need was recognized for lifetime e-mail addresses to prevent the deliverability problems arising from customers’ changes of ISP. Lifetime phone numbers have been available for years.

Mailers would realize many benefits from being able to maintain permanent mailing lists. The needs of large mailers for zip codes and other demographic information could be fulfilled through systems networking their lists with the master database.

Developments are underway in at least several foreign posts to introduce lifetime identifiers for postal customers. The USPS is a large, complex bureaucracy serving multiple and often conflicting constituencies. The need for change is openly recognized; the paths for change are openly conflicted by the multiple constituencies. With the proposed change in addressing representing such a fundamental and challenging change, the pressure to stimulate attention and action must be commensurately large. The need and logic for change will not be sufficient.

The steps below represent one path for change. First, a meaningful consortium of postal players, ideally major customers and system participants, must be formed with the goal of eliciting and insisting upon USPS objective attention to the concept. Validation of technology, economics, regulatory, privacy and implementation issues need study and review. This can be done via a public/private partnership to ensure broad consideration of various interests. A postal leadership attitude of interest and commitment is essential as well. Defining the vision of the future and putting an organization on the path to that vision is the essence of leadership.

To date the Postmaster General has spoken glowingly of USPS involvement in e-commerce and technology and has talked of treating the customer as an individual. Now is the time to move in that direction. The USPS can enter the world of electronic addressing as a defining leader or will be destined to follow the lead of others and the vagaries of chance.

Seldom does meaningful change come without conflict and risk. The benefits are worth the penny, and now is the time for action. The USPS cannot afford to let its future be defined by others, and the risk of that increases daily.