The convergence of an increasing amount of actionable data, and the ubiquity of network connectivity to integrate and share it, combined with powerful analytics may open up new opportunities for postal operators via an “Internet of things,” writes the USPS inspector general in a new report.
The report follows a recent forum with postal and big data experts and notes that the USPS scans and re-scans mail up to 1.7 trillion times a year – and is poised to leverage this data in new ways.
Further, each component of the physical infrastructure, whether a mailbox, a vehicle, a machine, or a letter carrier equipped with a sensor, could become a source of new data, according to the report.
It said the deployment of new software applications could help USPS monitor and control these assets and processes and effectively analyze and structure the data collected.
Recommendations in the report include focusing on data that has already been collected but not yet analyzed, ensuring the convergence between operational technologies and IT (such as by combining senor data from vehicles with data from existing enterprise planning systems for fleet management), and integrating data with other data sets – private, for example, via cloud technologies.
Report: https://www.uspsoig.gov/sites/default/files/document-library-files/2014/rarc-ib-14-002.pdf
