P Gopinath India Post embraces IT to keep pace with changing times: Secy P Gopinath At a time when technology is rapidly revolutionalising channels of communication, the Indian Postal Department has also embraced IT and diversified into areas like e-commerce and financial services to be on a par with the new age. Department of Post Secretary P Gopinath, a 1977-batch IPoS officer, shares with Bureaucracy Today how the public sector postal monolith has transformed itself to keep pace with the changing times. By Soma Chakraborty Aiming at making itself technology-enabled, self-reliant market leader, India Post under the leadership of Secretary P Gopinath has taken various revolutionary measures which have transformed the Government-run Postal Department into a highly reliable service for both common people and corporates alike.  One of such steps is ‘India Post 2012’, an ambitious IT transformation project which will enable the Government to create a national asset of 1,55,000 IT-enabled post offices. “The focus of the Department in the last one year has been on rolling out the IT modernization project along with its emphasis on service delivery improvement and the launch of new e-enabled products and services. The India Post 2012 project, scheduled to be completed by mid-2015, is the first of its kind undertaken by any postal operator in the world. The primary focus of the programme is to improve and automate the Post Office Savings Bank, Postal Life Insurance counter operations of post office and mail through business process re-engineering and the creation of efficient operations. The project will provide the Core Banking facility, ATMs in urban areas and micro-ATMs in rural areas,” Gopinath tells Bureaucracy Today. She further says, “The project will bridge the urban-rural divide, will make the post office the focal point of delivery of social security schemes of the Central and State governments under Direct Benefit Transfer and will provide biometric authentication of financial transactions and multiple channels like the ATM, mobile banking and net banking for the Savings Bank customer. It will also provide an electronic and secure mode of money transfer, particularly in rural India. To add to our bouquet of e-services, India Post has also launched the e-IPO service for the payment of RTI fee by all Indian residents through the e-Post Office portal. The e-Post Service is now available in one-to-many and many-to-one sender/recipient modes.” INITIATIVES TO TAP CORPORATE SEGMENT Keeping in view the increasing role of business in customer transactions in the emerging e-commerce market, the Postal Department has introduced various facilities like Cash-on-Delivery for speed post and business parcel products and the track and trace facility for speed post and parcel products.  “To cater to the return logistics requirement for the emerging e-Commerce, the facility of returns through speed post in the form of ‘Business Reply Speed Post’ service is being planned. The department has also started a pre-mailing activity in the form of Business Post so as to cater to the requirements of corporate customers and to assist bulk mailers. The Print to Post Service has been started with a view to integrating the mailing process of bulk mailers right from printing a letter to delivery,” Gopinath tells Bureaucracy Today. Aiming at faster communication of messages, the department has introduced an ePost Service. “It is a hybrid mail service where the message travels electronically and at the destination point the message is printed and delivered in paper format. Apart from sending ePost messages through post offices, individual customers can register themselves online to use the facility of pre-paid account wherein they can send ePost messages using their own computers and the Internet. The corporate version of the facility enables ministries/ departments/ PSUs and other organizations to send ePost messages from their premises in bulk. The instant transmission of the messages gives a futuristic approach and will help in tapping the emerging business in this field,” the 1977-batch IPoS officer says.  COMPETITION FROM PRIVATE COURIER SERVICES  On the competition from private courier services, Gopinath tells Bureaucracy Today, “The market today is large enough to accommodate more than one operator. The private couriers operate in a niche market with its own market space and clientele. None of the private couriers has a pan-India presence to the extent that India Post has. We are the sole player in the market that can offer pan-India service. This is our USP and the reason why our customers choose India Post for effecting delivery across the country.” She further says, “Despite over three decades of operations, the private courier sector in India is far from being ready to handle the kind of volumes that India Post does and reach the farthest corners of the country. Many of the private couriers in India do not follow labour laws and transparent service deficiency compensation policy. With the launch of the India Post IT Project we are ready to offer customers improvement in service delivery.”   VISION FOR INDIAN POSTAL DEPTT  On her vision for the Indian Postal Department, Gopinath says, “Our vision is to make India Post products and services the customer's first choice and all our efforts are geared towards this goal.” “Our efforts towards providing world-class service to customers have already started bearing fruits. The Mail Network Optimization Project of India Post has bagged the National E-Governance Award 2012-13 under the category ‘Outstanding performance in citizen-centric service delivery’,” the IPoS officer says proudly. National awards in e-Governance are presented every year by the Department of Reforms and Public Grievances in collaboration with the Department of Information Technology to recognize and promote excellence in implementing e-Governance initiatives by various Government sectors.  Appreciating P Gopinath’s immense contribution in making the Indian Postal Department high-tech and customer-friendly and putting it on a par with its global counterparts, the Bureaucracy Today editorial team designates the dynamic IPoS officer as Bureaucrat of the Month for the May 2014 issue of the magazine.