Page 42 - FCW, November/December 2019

Public Sector Innovations
Informed Delivery
U.S. Postal Service
The U.S. Postal Service’s Informed Delivery allows consumers to track packages and digitally preview their mail before it arrives. Customers can opt to receive scanned black-and-white images of the outside of incoming letter-size mail through a daily email message, an online dashboard or a mobile app.
Business mailers can participate, too,
by replacing or supplementing grayscale images with colorful, interactive content. To set up an interactive campaign, businesses use the Mailer Campaign Portal to tell USPS which pieces of mail they want to use, upload content and associated URLs, and schedule delivery.
“Informed Delivery makes mail a more dynamic and valuable communication channel for our mailers and our customers,” said Gary Reblin, vice president of new products and innovation at USPS.
The benefits of Informed Delivery include open rates of more than 60% — more than twice the industry average. The tool also creates multiple impressions from a single
piece of mail and therefore has the potential to increase USPS’ return on investment on its direct-mail marketing services because businesses can reach more customers without incurring more postage costs.
Launched nationally in 2017, Informed Delivery is now available to eligible residential consumers in the majority of ZIP Codes nationwide and was on track to reach 20 million users by the end of fiscal 2019. More than 2,600 brands have conducted interactive campaigns so far.
Next year, businesses will be able to
add a digital call to action to their package notifications, which means companies could include links to instructions or product information.
“Mail, when combined with digital,
is turning every interaction into action,” Reblin said. “New combinations of mail and digital have strengthened the relationship between businesses and customers.”
Intelligent Mail Barcode
Pennsylvania Department of Revenue
To improve delivery of tax-related mail and reduce costs associated with sending letters to incorrect addresses, the Pennsylvania Department of Revenue implemented the U.S. Postal Service’s Intelligent Mail barcode (IMb) to help verify addresses. Each 65-bar code, which is printed on outgoing mail to state taxpayers, contains a wealth of data, including a price identifier, the bureau and tax type, a serial number and a routing code.
The mail goes out at night, and the next morning, Business Manager Christine Sehar receives a file from USPS showing what was processed, what was undeliverable because of bad addresses and how many addresses were automatically changed. Those automatic changes are free because the implementation of IMb includes registration with USPS’ Address Correction Service.
The department is also registered for USPS’ Secure Destruction, so the service destroys any mail that cannot be delivered and is not federal tax information or a check. This has dramatically reduced the amount
of returned mail that department employees must manually sort.
“Before the project started, there were just thousands and thousands of pieces
of mail lying around the department, whether it was returned bad or returned good, and nobody could get to it to update the addresses in the system,” Project Manager Shane Lenker said. “With the implementation of IMb, all that mail has disappeared.”
Since launching IMb in November 2018, the department has collected more than $1.6 million in tax revenue and no longer has to pay for workers who used to handle the mail.
“We’re getting better, updated addresses, better information on the system — there’s a lot of direct benefit to this,” Lenker said.
Kessel Run
Air Force Life Cycle Management Center, U.S. Air Force
It’s undeniable that the Air Force’s Kessel Run program — an expanding group of developers, designers and engineers — has changed the way the service and the Defense Department approach software development.
“They’re actually getting systems that work for them, and if not, they’re seeing fixes in rapid cycles that help build trust that the model actually works,” said Sam Stollar, vice president of intelligence and Air Force programs at Octo Consulting Group.
Kessel Run grew its ranks throughout 2019 and has combined platform-as-a- service technology, agile development methodologies and organizational changes to make an enviable and agenda-setting model for the rest of DOD.
By implementing its Pivotal Cloud Foundry (PCF), a common set of DevOps and application programming interface services, Kessel Run supported the quick onboarding of hundreds of full-stack engineers and provided real-time visibility into product teams while reducing the time it takes to achieve an authority to operate
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