A long time ago I spent a lot of money on Federal Express, UPS, and the Post Office. I shipped a lot of stuff: contracts, CDs, books. Today, not so much.
Rather than rely on human-based shipping, I now use high-speed Internet and FTP to get important business documents back and forth. My reliance upon electronic document delivery got me to thinking about the future fate of the Post Office.
Here in the U.S., there is talk of reducing mail delivery from six days a week down to five; no more Saturday delivery.
When I was growing up, I remember how the mail came twice a day. There was the early delivery and the late delivery. On Saturday and Sunday mail come once.
Stamps were also 6 cents back then.
Today stamps are 44 cents and the mail comes once a day. And while I love my mailman and all the goodies he delivers to my door six days a week, I recognize that the post is a dying service.
I now pay most of my bills online. That’s about 5 or 6 checks that go out electronically every month. A few bills I still pay by dropping a check in the mail, but that’s the exception. It used to be that government stuff had to be done by mail, but now even the Feds have web sites and allow for electronic payments.
As an experiment, I’d like to see if I could survive a month without sending out an mail. I think I could do it. The problem isn’t with the sending of mail, of course, it’s with receiving it. I still get a lot of mail. So unless everyone decides not to send mail, and make deposits and payments electronically, it doesn’t look like the Post Office is going away any time soon.
The thing is, obviously, the Post Office could go away. They could downsize: Smaller Post Office branches could be closed. Door-to-door service can be replaced by local drop boxes. But those are physical things. I believe the future of the US Postal Service, and it’s success, is on the Internet.
In cyberspace, the US Postal Service could save its butt by creating and maintaining secure email. Call it Federal Email.
Federal Email would be a separate protocol from STMP and POP3 used by today’s email programs. It would have a verifiable sender and recipient. It would confirm delivery and when the recipient read the message. And it would be secure enough to disallow spam and viruses.
You could use Federal Email for official correspondence, to send important documents, make deposits, and other secure transactions. Yes, it would cost you for the service, but only to send, not to receive or use the service.
I think Federal Email would be a boon idea, and help propel the Post Office into the 21st Century while still keeping it relevant. It also clears a few hurdles that plain vanilla Internet email has been trying to leap for a while, primarily secure delivery.
