August 15, 2014 – Yesterday the USPS Office of Inspector General released their Management Advisory Report entitled Geo-Fence Technology in Delivery Operations. Since I retired from USPS in 2007 I guess I am WAY behind in their methods to further push, I mean…manage their letter carriers. 
I had never heard of this geo-fence technology until I read this OIG report. For those who, like myself, don’t understand what geo-fencing letter carriers is here’s how this report defines it:
The U.S. Postal Service is developing and pilot testing the
Delivery Management System to improve carrier efficiency
during street delivery. This system combines Global Positioning
System data and other data from various systems to allow
supervisors to see “at a glance” the location of each carrier and
whether they are ahead of or behind their scheduled delivery
time. These scheduled delivery times are based on each routes’
base evaluation and the associated Managed Service Point
scan times on each route.
This system will also include geo-fence technology to assist
supervisors in monitoring delivery operations. Geo-fence
technology is a system based on the concept of virtual
geographic zones. Should a carrier deviate from his or her
designated geographic zone during street delivery, an alert is
sent to the supervisor in an email or text message. The
geo-fence component of the pilot program was expected
to begin in July 2014. There are seven planned test sites
consisting of one delivery unit in each of the seven Postal
Service areas of operation.
So, now you know…if you’re a letter carrier you may want to look long at hard at your ‘geo-fence’.
Click Here to Read The Entire OIG Report (PDF)
Rick Owens
Postal Employee Network
The problem is, route evaluations are rarely even near perfect, for many reasons, mainly because the programs are DESIGNED to take time away from carriers, even though they were working, and working efficiently the entire evaluated day/s.
The programs used involve internet street mapping systems (think Google, etc.), that are known to point at wrong addresses, even on the wrong side of the street. This may not seem to be a problem, but it skews the delivery lines of travel.
In a job like that of a letter carrier, many factors change from day to day. These programs (there is always a program) may give estimates, but in now way can evaluate so many things that change from day to day, block to block, etc.
Just how many supervisors are taken off their real job of managing good service, by being sidetracked and forced to handle these “alerts”.
Supervisors need data and information, but electronic programs can never replace real experience, common sense, and empathy for carrier on the street.
Ok, then, how about geo-fence technology for all the eas people who don’t do anything….????
Ok, so we have one person delivering mail (doing work) and one person watching a monitor, watching another person doing work. hmmmmm if we eliminate the person watching the other person, wouldn’t this save money? If we eliminate the geo-fence technology wouldn’t we save a lot of waste of money? And that would mean a carrier would do his job with less stress, which would lead to less accidents and better quality of delivering….hmmmm….management should think of better ways a manager could get off his butt and do some real work… or maybe we just don’t need them….