U.S. Postal Service refuses to adapt to digital world
A few months ago, we published a blog about the United States Post Office and how their inability to adapt to the changing state of documents–to the digital age, has left them severely in debt, with a $5.1 billion net loss in 2011.
This quote by Post Master General Patrick Donahoe led me to believe that the Postal Service understood the challenges ahead of them–they understood they were in a digital world with outdated solutions. “We’re in a deep financial crisis today because we have a business model that’s tied to the past,” Donahoe told the New York Times “Our business model is fundamentally inflexible. It prevents the postal service from solving its problems.”
And then I saw this commercial. It appears the tactic to overcome their $5.1 billion net loss is to scare people from using digital communication, because after all a “refrigerator has never been hacked, an online virus has never attacked a corkboard.”
No one has ever sent anthrax through an email though…
I like the United States Post Service, and it’s certainly not something I want to see go. What I want is to see them innovate and make changes that will drive their business model into this century…not try to scare people away from technology.
They need radical change. Like making a play for control of government broadband, defining the Post Service as a communications-delivery service, rather than a team of letter carriers.
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