REINVENTING POST OFFICES IN A DIGITAL WORLD

REINVENTING POST OFFICES IN A DIGITAL WORLD

Offering virtual mailboxes for personal computers in the United States on a private basis has sold the program to foreign portal services. With mail volumes decreasing annually, many countries have reinvented their postal services over the last decades to perform multifaceted delivery and information companies to key into to the virtual age. Although most post offices still deliver mails weekly, a lot of their fixed assets, staff and traditional focus on paper mail has been jettisoned. The
role of postal providers in a digital world has had to be redefined.
Germany for example has sold off almost all its post office buildings in the past 15 years and the postal services is now housed, mostly within other business partners like banks, convenience stores and other private homes. This can also be said for most other European post offices.
" We realised that being a national postal provider was an endangered business, that we had to redefine the role of postal providers in a digital world," said Clemens Beckmann, executive Vice President of innovation of the German post office's mail division. The Deutsche Post went from being an owner of 29,000 post offices in 1990, to now becoming a tenant, with thousands of counters lodged in other businesses. Outsourcing has allowed it trim staff.

BERLIN PHOTO: The Old Post Office Building
 At the same time, a lot of the European postal services, have developed electronic services that are increasingly making the old traditional post offices and mailboxes obsolete. Post offices on customers' computers run digital mailboxes that receive bills and catalogs and customers can tell the post office what they want printed  and delivered. Some countries in Europe can now buy virtual postages from their cellphones.
Adaptation to the digital age however, vary widely within the European postal services. A lot of Folks run their little conner stores and take up postal tasks as well, partly to get more customers especially in the rural parts of Europe. A customer would stop over to buy stamps or envelops and grab a paper or soda as well.
In the U.S, with the postal service facing insolvency, it is looking to Europe for new operating models. To close a multi billion dollar gap, the USPS has proposed eliminating about one tenth of its post offices and is selling off historical buildings that have anchored towns across America. The neoclassical landmark post office in Greenwich, Connecticut was sold to a private developer.
Meanwhile the post office will move to a former pet supply store!
                                   
Greenwich Post Office.                      Pet Shop                                                  Pet Shop Housing
 Connecticut.                                                                                                      Post Office
                                                                                 

Source: The New York Times 31 Oct. 2011
Pet shop photo by: Bob Luckey
US- http://wiki/National_Register_of_Historic_Places