During my time at Old Dominion University, I took a class entitled, STEM 370T TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY.
My final project for the class was to analyze a social issue that was being changed by technology and try to find a solution to the problem. I did not find a solution to the question I posed, “Should online forms of delivery services replace the brick and mortar store such as the United States Post Office?”. Suffice it to say, this project made me think deeply and conduct research into why it is important to keep institutions when online services can do it faster. Before I conducted the research, my personal opinion was to get rid of post offices because of how slow they are. But when I really began to look at it, I realized that it is important for individuals without internet and those who prefer receiving mail by hand still have the option to do that.
Introduction
The creation on online businesses is causing physical stores to close. Technology evolves faster than physical businesses. Brick and mortar stores are unable to compete with online retailers. One of these brick-and-mortar organizations that is being impacted is the United States Post Office. Measures are being taken to prevent the United States post office or the USPS from being extinct. However, technology is constantly evolving, making it easier to complete services online that were traditionally performed at a physical post office.
Analysis of Issue
Typically, physical retail stores are able to update and change policies without the government having a say in how the business is run. This is not the case for the U.S. post office. The post office is controlled by the government, so it is hard for it to make changes (Boccia et al., 2020). The post office has made changes in the past. In 2013, the government began investing in other technologies (Boccia et al., 2020). One of these technologies was a mobile post office app for android and apple devices (Tolver, 2013). Unfortunately, these changes were not enough. The post office is not evolving with the times.
Current Data
The demand for physical mail has gone down thirty percent in 2020 and expected to drop another fifty percent due to the corona virus pandemic (Boccia et al., 2020). The post office is falling behind in the technology field because there are many online alternatives. People are using online platforms like email and social media to communicate instead of using physical letters like they have in the past (Boccia et al., 2020). Bills and statements have also transitioned to online instead of the paper copies that were traditionally delivered through the mail. Additionally, people are able to bypass the post office by sending gifts to loved ones that live far away through amazon that will deliver directly to their house instead of taking the package to the post office. Online companies can provide post office services for things that have been shipped. An example are the online sites allow customers to purchase stamps online. These options are just a few of the ways that people are saving time and money by not using the post office.
While the post office seems to be disappearing, it is important to keep post offices because they are intricate and provide money to the government. The reason the post office is not current with the times is because the post office is under government restrictions that keep it from evolving (Boccia et al, 2020). The post office is hanging on by a thread because of its partnerships with other companies such as FedEx (Ecker, 2018). This keeps post offices from completely going under.
Future Trends
Currently, the future of USPS looks bleak. Post offices could become privatized, which means that parts of the post office would be sold off piece by piece (Ecker, 2018). For instance, USPS needs to streamline services, and close some locations that are not making money (Boccia et al., 2020). Additionally, post offices can cut costs on the gas that mail trucks use by reducing the number of times that the post office delivers mail each week (Boccia et al., 2020). The USPS needs to take strides to be a worthy competitor against the online mail service world.
Refection
For almost fifty years, the post office has been a complicated tradition in the United States. It is an intricate system and would be hard to get rid of It is an important because it affects how paper items and packages are delivered. If the USPS ceased to exist, there would be three main negative consequences. The first one is that People that work at for USPS would be unemployed. Secondly, Individuals without internet would struggle to send mail or packages if their only options were internet. Third, some people like that the USPS is a physical place where mail and package services can occur in one place. The Post office is not a progressive organization, but it is essential to the United States for the services that it provides.
Reference
Boccia, Romina, David A. Ditch, James L. Gattuso, and Rachel Greszler. “Congress Should Free the Postal Service, Not Bail It Out.” Backgrounder 3495 (2020).
Ecker, Martha. “Efforts to Privatize the United States Postal Service: Labor’s Response.” Labor Studies Journal 43.3 (2018): 137-88.
Tolver, K. (2013, May 9). USPS Mobile App Updates. Digital.gov. https://digital.gov/2013/05/09/usps-mobile-app-updates/.
Another project that I had for this class was to collect data on a