Poste Italiane’s Mark Fardelli is
the newly elected chairman of the .post Group, officially created
during the Postal Operations Council in April 2013. Twenty-eight member
countries have already joined the group, which also welcomed one
associate member, IT giant, Cisco (U.K.).
The group held its first general assembly
shortly after its creation to discuss next steps and define a work
programme. Fardelli says the initial response to the .post Group is very
positive, especially with support coming from all areas of the world.
Why should member countries be interested in .post?
Mark Fardelli: Because it’s the post in a
digital world. It’s the future. Everyone is going in that direction and
so must we. The digital dimension of the postal sector has to be grasped
fully, and .post is one of the best ways to bring Posts’ traditional
values into the digital world. To translate that from the physical to
the digital world would be fantastic. That’s a massive advantage for
operators and member countries.
The .post Group has now been created. How do you feel about this historic moment?
Everyone is excited and keen to further
develop .post. There are many valid ideas, and we will need to focus and
use our strengths as a group to create one single, strong vision.
Everyone’s vision makes perfect sense for their own reality, but we need
to mix them together. That might be challenging, but I’m sure we will
be able to do it.
What does your work programme entail?
We have outlined several macro tasks to work
on. These include developing a strategy, promotion and helping group
members that have a concept for a service on the .post platform develop
test-bed applications.
We also have to look at governance and
monitoring issues with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and
Numbers, the .post management policy, budgeting and financing and
services to enhance e-commerce, for example.
We are certainly at the beginning, but not at
the very beginning. Some concepts and applications are more or less
ready to be used over .post. It’s just a matter of further increasing
this critical mass of members. We need to make sure everyone knows what
the possibilities of .post are.
The majority of .post Group members are
UPU member countries or postal operators. Why was a private company like
Cisco allowed to become an associate member?
As much as we’d like to do everything
ourselves, we realize we will need help in some areas. So it’s more than
welcome if we have companies like Cisco, a major player in the IT
industry, that can help us with certain aspects that are not within the
know-how of all the members.
What pilots have been launched to test possible .post applications?
Some applications have been set up between
members, such as the PREM service between Italy and Macau that was
successfully demonstrated during the Doha Congress. While the technical
side is ready, we are now looking at the business modelling side of this
application. The good news is that at the UPU level, the technical
standard for this new service has gone from Status 0 to Status 1 at the
UPU Standards Board. This will eventually enable other member countries
to use this standard to develop similar services.
What can .post bring to developing
countries, where even the physical mail network is not particularly well
developed. Are they ready for the electronic world?
I have asked myself that question and I think
the answer lies in the fact that they can see the opportunities the
.post platform offers. They will have at their disposal a platform at
reduced costs, enabling them to offer quality, digital postal services.
They could have just waited to see what would
happen, but instead they decided to invest in the .post Group from the
start. We have to help them realize what they see. If there’s a
possibility to use .post to enter into the digital world more easily and
quickly, then it’s going to be useful for them.
Source : http://news.upu.int/insight/upu-movers/mark-fardelli/
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