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“Undercover Boss,” a CBS show that began airing in February, follows Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) as they go undercover to work primarily in lower-level positions in their own companies. Beyond its entertainment value, the episodes have exposed a significant disconnect between senior management and employees. While featured CEO’s have not recently, if ever, worked [...]

On March 2, Postmaster General John E. Potter presented a 10-year “action plan” to meet the challenges faced by the Postal Service as it encounters declining mail volumes combined with increasing overhead costs. The plan comes as a product of a yearlong study by the Postal Service and a number of leading consultants to identify [...]

According to a representative on the Postal Regulatory Commission’s staff, a Postal Service-run lottery “could offer the potential for substantial profits for the Postal Service and utilize its current retail infrastructure with its 36,000 retail outlets.” Popular lottery formats in many states include drawings and instant lottery tickets. The claim is that running a national lottery [...]

Courtesy of Apple Last August, Pushing the Envelope ran a topic on e-readers — devices designed for portable book reading. Two weeks ago, Apple unveiled the iPad. The iPad offers multiple functionality including the ability to read books, surf the Internet, and use computer applications. Unlike most e-readers, the iPad does not have [...]

Recently Glassdoor.com announced the winners of the second annual “Employees’ Choice Awards” for Best Places to Work. The Top 50 were selected from more than 37,000 companies reviewed by the nearly 100,000 employees who completed a 20-question survey on Glassdoor.com in 2009. Only companies who received at least 25 votes were included on the list. [...]

Those of us helping on the Office of Inspector General blog had so much fun last year we thought we would make the top 10 stories an annual event. We’ve provided the top 10 postal stories for 2009. Tell us about any stories we missed and add whatever comments you think appropriate. In [...]

When people try to discover whether the Postal Service is operating more efficiently or not, they often talk about TFP. What is TFP? TFP stands for Total Factor Productivity. It measures the ratio of the Postal Service’s outputs to its inputs, in other words, how much output the Postal Service produces with [...]

Last Monday was predicted to be the busiest day of the year for Post Offices™ across the country. Have you visited a Post Office recently? If so, we would like to hear your story. Why were you there? What worked well? What didn’t work well? Has your local Post Office adopted any best [...]

From public transportation to sports stadiums, venues use their prime real estate to sell space to advertisers and generate extra revenue. Take for example the Washington Metro transit system. Ad space is for sale everywhere — on buses and trains (inside and out) and even on train tunnel walls and floors. In these times [...]

We all know the Postal Service is going through rough times right now. Sometimes, when a situation is difficult, it’s useful to look to the past for perspective. Forty years ago today, there was no Postal Service (and no Office of Inspector General). The Post Office Department was 5 months away from [...]