More than 30 additional countries have signed up to join the Global Monitoring System (GMS), which measures quality of service.
This brings the total number of participating countries to 48 since the system was first launched in 2009.
GMS uses radio frequency identification technology to primarily measure the quality of letter-post services on the inbound stretch.
A number of new participants saw the costs of their initial investment to join the system decrease. Some 25 countries were able to individually save tens of thousands of US dollars due to a special agreement between the UPU and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).
This arrangement ensures that purchased equipment is exempt of taxes in the receiving country. The UNDP also supervises logistical matters, such as customs clearances and delivering equipment to the installation site.
Happy user
Malaysia decided to sign up to GMS during its inaugural year.
“Before we joined, we were doing manual monitoring and testing of the service performance of inbound international mail. We thought we were doing well but the manual testing system did not really measure end-to-end and it was not independent,” said Pos Malaysia’s Chum Choy Han.
And GMS delivered on its promise.
“The first results showed that we were not as good as other countries. We then worked with the GMS team on areas to improve. The good thing about GMS is its very robust diagnostics. It was a great help to us to know why and where we did not perform and how we could address those areas of service failure,” she added.