As demand for traditional postal services declines, the Post Office is moving to occupy a new role assisting in the delivery of online public services. A week-long series of CSW seminars explored the implications for civil servants
As belts are tightened and efficiency reforms introduced, civil servants are being asked to do more with less. This means having to find new ways of working – ways which will accommodate the budget cuts, but still enable policy objectives to be achieved.
Increasingly, this is being achieved in two complimentary ways. First, by increasing the amount of services delivered digitally; and second, by finding more effective ways of working with service delivery partners. These partners range from those delivering frontline services, such as doctors, schools and charities, through those which implement IT infrastructure, to the organisations offering front and back office support – such as the Post Office.
As delegates to the CSW seminars that took place last month heard, the Post Office is currently attempting to position itself as a government partner of choice. It believes that its network of 11,500 branches, which are visited by 20 million people every week, provide it with a unique opportunity to reach the British public. Indeed, 93 per cent of the population live within one mile of a post office, a figure that rises to 99 per cent in deprived urban areas.
To help the Post Office meet the needs of citizens and government, a major transformation programme is currently underway. With the help of statutory funding to the tune of between £300m and £400m annually throughout 2012-15, the Post Office is integrating its shop-based outlets more closely with their host retailers and creating a set of modern, flagship stores. Previously, it has received around £100m a year in financial support from the government – a figure that increased to £500m between 2006 and 2008, when extra funds were provided to help it through a process of managed decline that saw staff being made redundant and 2,500 branches closed, according to Shareholder Executive chief Stephen Lovegrove.
The new investments will bring benefits for the wider public, as well as the Post Office. For example, by ripping out many of the separate counters and security screens that separate Post Office from retail operations, opening hours can be extended and queues reduced, said Kevin Gilliland, Post Office network and sales director. In addition, a set of key city branches are being refurbished and given much longer opening hours, automated services and more efficient queue management systems.
Overall, the changes are designed to help the Post Office get as close as possible to surviving without continued subsidies, in part by smartening its image and streamlining its operations to make it a more attractive partner for government departments and agencies developing online services. This in turn should prevent further branch closures.
“A few years ago,” commented Gilliland, “when we were worried about the number of post offices, there was a feeling that we needed business coming through our branches almost at all costs; that this was about saving the Post Office.” That feeling has gone now, he said, and the Post Office is positioning itself to “do the physical bit in the digital world”.
Think local
As Gilliland states, the Post Office hopes to become a reliable and efficient delivery partner for departments and agencies keen to reduce their own front-office operations – often by putting their services online. But why do civil service organisations require local outlets in order to operate web-based services? According to the speakers at the seminars, there are several reasons, including access to service users to assist service design, and the ability to support and identify people using web-based services.
Rob Wormald, associate consultant at PublicCo Limited, pointed out that post offices are already used by a large proportion of the population, and have excellent experience of delivering over-the-counter services to a very broad demographic. By consulting with the voluntary organisations and businesses that work directly with its intended service recipients, he said, the government can learn more about exactly what type of services are required by different communities.
“Lots of departments do not have the skilled people. They do not seek out smaller organisations and use the market to frame the detail of what is required,” he said, suggesting that departments move towards joint commissioning: working together with providers when developing services and delivery mechanisms. Then service design would benefit from new ideas and more imaginative thinking, he said.
The Post Office’s own experiences have highlighted the benefits of closer working, according to its chief operating officer, Mike Young. “We take our partnerships to a strategic level; we share our five-year plan [with our partners] and, on a week-to-week basis, we sit down with partners and look at what’s working and what isn’t,” he said.
Vital access
When it comes to the need for government bodies to reach every part of the country, the Post Office believes that it’s in a strong position: it has main branches and franchises in almost every significant community. Indeed, Jane Vass at Age UK agreed this is one of the most valuable aspects of the company for older people.
“Our research has found that around a fifth of people aged over 65 rely on family and friends to draw cash for them, which reduces their independence and exposes them to risk,” she said. “Access to basic, every-day transaction banking is therefore something that is hugely important and is why the Post Office is such a vital part of the equation – not just for services, but also for day-to-day contact. The reach it has into the community is critical.”
This view was backed by June Milligan, director general of local government and communities at the Welsh Government. “In some communities in Wales, the Post Office is the unique provider that allows people to access their bank accounts,” she said.
It is for this reason that the Welsh government has invested £5.3m in the form of over 300 grants to local Post Office branches – money that has been used to develop new products and services. For example, some have used the funding to stay open for longer; others have diversified their product offerings to include fresh bread, passport photos, even coffee mornings and language classes.
Lancaster City Council chief executive Mark Cullinan also sees value in working with Post Office branches, particularly in rural and deprived communities. “We are interested in working with the Post Office to see if we can shift some more of our services into the local Post Office networks. We think that will help sustain post offices and increase the access points that we have for our services. The Post Office will be able to deliver some services more efficiently than we can,” he said.
Wide-ranging services
So exactly what kinds of services can the Post Office help to deliver? The most obvious examples are identity assurance and supported access for online services, helping departments and agencies to verify the identities of those setting up new online service accounts and to assist those less familiar with the web to get up and running online.
Post offices can also play a key role in running more traditional services, though, taking the pressure off public bodies’ frontline operations and offering a more efficient delivery channel. For example, 17 flagship branches are currently using biometric capture equipment to take the photographs and fingerprints of thousands of foreign businesspeople and students for the UK Border Agency, enabling the UKBA to issue residency cards.
In choosing a delivery partner, the UKBA’s Jeremy Oppenheim added, the agency needed an organisation that would be trusted by its customers, “and the Post Office ranked very high in providing that sense of confidence.” He had found the Post Office a responsive partner, he added: when problems arise, “someone rings me up. We talk about those problems and agree a solution, and we keep an eye on it together. That’s a real delight compared to others with whom we work.”
The UKBA is not the only government body that’s already working with the Post Office. The Department for Work and Pensions has also enlisted its help, in its case with the delivery of Universal Credit.
The DWP’s Mark Fisher, director of social justice, explained that the department has brought the Post Office on board in an attempt to tackle financial exclusion. By supplying bank accounts that help people with household budgeting, he said, the Post Office should play an important role in supporting them in the transition from existing benefits to the new system.
The Post Office is also aiming to help reduce financial exclusion through the provision of other appropriate financial products. However, as Nick Kennett, director of financial services at the Post Office, pointed out, it is important these new products and services are commercially viable as well as being useful for the socially and financially excluded.
“We offer free ATMs, Christmas Club accounts and other simple accounts that allow people to save,” he said. “However, one of our challenges is to balance our services for the community with the need to provide postmasters with a sustainable business model.”
The digital divide
With an increasing number of everyday tasks being completed online, and with the government keen to push more services onto the web, a key Whitehall priority is to provide more people with internet access; 8.4m UK citizens are currently ‘digitally excluded’.
Many of these individuals “pass through our doors every week,” said Kevin Seller, head of government services at the Post Office. He believes this is an area where the Post Office can add a great deal of value. By sharing information about how to access and use the internet, including signposting individuals to where they can receive training and further education, sub-postmasters can play a key role in helping people get online. “It’s about how we get the customer to feel confident [with using the internet]. Familiarity encourages people to use that service,” he said.
Indeed, trials are already underway. In the London borough of Westminster, for example, the Post Office is testing a digital kiosk system in some of its stores to allow customers without internet connections to access official forms online. And Helen Bailey, the chief executive of Local Partnerships – a not-for-profit company that supports partnership working in the public sector – said she can envisage a future in which semi-private spaces in Post Offices or public buildings are used to provide assisted access to online services.
As the pressure to reduce costs escalates, officials across Whitehall and beyond need to find more innovative ways to achieve their objectives. This means thinking about one of the UK’s oldest institutions in a new light. No longer just the place to post letters, the Post Office is developing a new commercial model and trying to carve a niche for itself in the digital age.
Written by Joshua Chambers, Ben Cook, Matt Ross, Becky Slack and Stuart Watson