How the Postal Service is putting data at the core of its ‘always on’ tech work
Embracing a data-first approach has helped the U.S. Postal Service live up to its “always on” mission, the agency’s chief information officer said Thursday, paving the way for major product wins and the successful adoption of artificial intelligence tools.
Speaking at FedScoop’s FedTalks event in Washington, D.C., USPS CIO Pritha Mehra said the independent executive branch agency set up an internal “data group” that now assesses any new application under consideration for use.
That data group, which created a data governance policy for the agency, works with the USPS business and IT units on “common definitions” — an especially critical piece of the puzzle given the 110 petabytes of data it handles.
“All data is enterprise, and everybody needs to have the same definition of data,” Mehra said. “Cataloging and curating and tagging and snagging — whatever you want to call it, data is really important.”
Organizing and managing data in a way that makes it “immediately accessible” is paramount for USPS, Mehra said, so the agency has put forth metrics for its developers to hit, including “whether this piece of code is going to be ‘always on’” and ensuring there is “low latency.”
“It’s all about making the data available,” she said, “and then having all the layers of security.”
The agency’s security posture around data is crucial, Mehra added, since AI applications “become better and better” once there is “good data” to work with. USPS’s AI use cases include tools for logistics optimization, customer care, customer sentiment analysis, maintenance assistance, fraud detection, web risk analysis, augmented development and AI-assisted training courses.
Prioritizing data has also been at the core of what Mehra said is the technology that she is “most proud of” that’s been deployed in the past few years: an API platform for business shippers.
With the platform, which brings together all participants in the supply chain, USPS has made it a priority to be responsive to shippers — meaning that if they suggest a relevant feature, the agency will “bring it in” and prove its “really agile” bona fides, Mehra said.
“We have 90 billion transactions happening. So I have a lot of faith in this API platform, because we hopefully want to take this to a new level,” she added. “If you’re a business, then this is the platform we want you to come to.”
Other semi-recent tech successes touted by Mehra at USPS include the website that managed COVID-19 test kits, which processed more than 885 million orders to more than 90 million U.S. households at a 96.6% on-time service performance rate, and the launch of its Informed Delivery app, which provides photos to users of mail before it arrives.
“I’ll tell you, my most useful value of this product when I signed up was my son’s report card,” Mehra said. “I came home and I said, ‘You have a report card to show Mom?’ He said, ‘No.’ I said, ‘Do you want me to show you the picture of the report card?’ He’s like, ‘What are you, God?’ I said I was pretty close.”
Though USPS is only in the fourth year of its 10-year strategic plan, Mehra said the agency is full steam ahead in “modernizing everything.” With product launches, data initiatives and AI implementation, it’d be easy to get lost in the tech sauce. But for Mehra, a 35-year veteran of USPS, one guiding principle has helped her along the way.
“You have to relentlessly prioritize, because there’s so much technology out there,” she said. “I’m afraid to come to these conferences, because every three minutes someone says, ‘I have this AI model for you.’ And I’m like, ‘Oh my God, you have any idea how many AI models I have, right?’ So you have to relentlessly prioritize.”
