UPU Contemplates Digital Substitution

T he Universal Postal Union Congress that just adjourned quiet- ly adopted the agency’s e-services strategy without argument. The concepts enshrined in the so-called action plan for 2009-2012 are intended to keep the posts relevant and subtlety include the pragmatic notion of substituting digitized mail for the practically sanctified obligation of universal service.

In other words, if a post could sign up a hard-to-get-to rural customer for some kind of online postal mail delivery service, it may ultimately be able to reduce trips to that customer’s physi- cal location, dramatically lowering its cost of providing universal service and putting the post in a better position to deflect new entrants that cherry-pick high-density areas.

The UPU wants to position online postal transactions as “the most trusted online transactions” and bring a regulatory frame- work to the Wild West of the Internet.

The plan is supposed to get the posts out of a reactive funk and into a proactive stance where they can use .post and other e- services initiatives as a way to take control of the market’s shift from physical to electronic and create new revenue opportunities. The plan embraces certified and registered electronic mail services; trust and identity management services; e-archiving and document management services; e-government services; multimedia access to postal services; and hybrid services.

Various posts have of course implemented some or all of these services but they aren’t synchronized and in the UPU’s lat- est construct of things the common denominator would be the trusted identity people and companies would get from the .post top-level domain – an idea that has been kicking around for the last eight years without being acted upon.

Now it appears that the UPU is getting ready to seek out a third party that could formulate a business plan and act as regis- trar since the UPU – because of its inter-governmental status as an agency of the United Nations – can’t sign a typical commer- cial contract with ICANN, the not-for-profit entity that oversees Internet domain name assignments, and can’t promise such things as indemnification. International law experts are hammer- ing out the necessary modifications to the boilerplate ICANN contract to make it signable by the UPU.

According to the UPU’s stratagem, “The development of the next-generation postal networks, based upon the .post spon- sored top level domain (sTLD), is important in defining a solid role for the postal sector in the Internet-based globalization of services. The related governance of the next-generation net- works is essential. A governance group needs to be formed to deal with policy and compliance matters. The governance body should also be charged with the development of a public/private partnership for .post in order to provide the service around the world, since .post is the extension of the postal network for the future. A request for proposals (RFP) will be required to identity possible partners. The RFP should challenge the private sector to study and recommend how .post can be used to meet the needs of this network. A report and recommendations should then be tabled as an outcome from the RFP.”

When any of this will actually happen is of course one of those bureaucratic mysteries but the action plan does give the green light to seeking extra underwriting even from the outside, so to speak, which could be a consortium of postal companies, a private company, venture capitalists or any combination.

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