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The U.S. Postal Service has extended to Jan. 11 the deadline for companies to express interest in taking over two Web-based postal services - secure electronic messaging and electronic postmarks.
The two services are among five e-commerce undertakings that have failed to generate revenue for the financially beleaguered Postal Service.
Faced with staggering financial losses, USPS is in the midst of restructuring and hopes to outsource services "where it makes sense for this organization," said spokeswoman Sue Brennan.
But contractor interest in taking over the services is questionable. The financial risk is high, said Thomas Anokye, a Texas-based technology support vendor who unsuccessfully tried to interest a major U.S. corporation in jointly bidding on the services.
Anokye said the venture still might prove profitable if the services could be performed by foreign companies with cheaper labor rates.
For USPS, shedding unprofitable operations is critical. The agency suffered $1.7 billion in operating losses in 2001 and as much as $5 billion in losses because of the October anthrax attacks and September terrorist attacks.
Under those circumstances, "we need to focus on better and fewer things," said Charles Chamberlain, the Postal Service's manager of secure electronic services.
So USPS is seeking private companies to take over PosteCS, its secure electronic messaging service, and its Electronic Postmark service. Vendors are to supply "labor, supervision, equipment, facilities and supplies necessary to operate" the two services, USPS officials said.
PosteCS is a Web-based file-delivery service that lets users send electronic files that are too large for most commercial e-mail systems, Chamberlain said. The service...