USPS Thinking About Going to the Cloud

According to a report on Ed O'Keefe's Federal Eye website, " The U.S. Postal Service is thinking about going to the cloud. The cash-strapped agency recently proposed a new online mailbox system that could receive and store official documents like bills, legal correspondence and health records."

Reporter Alicia Mazzara and GovLoop pens, "The Postal Service has been struggling as mail volume has dropped over the years. Several other countries already offer an electronic mailbox system. While it’s clear that the USPS needs to think of ways to stay relevant in the electronic age, many public servants were skeptical about this latest eMailbox proposal."

Government workers’ concern with the eMailbox had less to do with the concept and more with the agency implementing it. “If this had been offered a few years ago I would have jumped right in,” said Kirby Coon, an employee at the Department of Agriculture. “However, the service that is received from USPS today is not something that inspires confidence they could pull this off.”

Not everyone was as pessimistic about the Postal Service’s ability to adapt. “There is no reason the USPS can’t figure out how to leverage the information age to enhance their business and services,” said Richard Rynearson, a National Parks Service employee. “The people at Google, Facebook, Yahoo and others are constantly coming up with innovative web applications. The USPS can too.”

According to an entry on Wikipedia, "Cloud computing is the delivery of computing as a service rather than a product, whereby shared resources, software, and information are provided to computers and other devices as a utility (like the electricity grid) over a network (typically the Internet)."

Shown above, 2004 Cloudscapes stamps.

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