The Postal Service owns the biggest audience in shipping. It monetizes that audience the least.
usps.com draws roughly twice the traffic of ups.com or fedex.com. Informed Delivery is a 72.9-million-user digital mailbox no competitor can copy. And nearly every moment of that attention is given away free. The OIG’s white paper will ask where the revenue is. We started answering before the bid: a benchmarking instrument covering foreign posts, domestic competitors, checkout friction, and legally screened revenue opportunities, running live on this site.
The asset is attention at national scale. The gap is a monetization layer: no paid tier, no productized returns, an unbranded rate card inside third-party postage platforms, and a daily-habit mailbox sold to mailers but not built out as a channel.
The requirement
Four research notes. We have started all four.
The OIG answers research questions 1-3 with internal data. The Supplier owns questions 4-6: benchmarking, UX, and revenue opportunities. Each SOW task below links to its working preview inside Meridian.
T1 · SOW 3.a
Research note: USPS digital channels vs. foreign postal operators
Postal, non-postal commercial, and non-postal government services offered digitally by foreign posts; how posts monetize their digital channels; which offerings are common vs. emerging. Max 5 single-spaced pages plus attachments.
T2 · SOW 3.b
Research note: USPS digital channels vs. domestic competitors
Digital offerings from Amazon, UPS, FedEx, and other domestic parcel operators; how competitors monetize their websites; comparison of digital revenue-stream types (not amounts). Max 5 single-spaced pages plus attachments.
T3 · SOW 3.c
Research note: UX of revenue-generating tasks on USPS digital channels
Broad heuristic review (not usability testing, not 508 review) of purchasing postage, stamps, and merchandise on usps.com and the USPS Mobile App; barriers and friction that suppress completion. Capped at 20 percent of the overall budget by the SOW.
T4 · SOW 3.d
Research note: revenue-generation opportunities from USPS digital channels
Modifications to existing streams and entirely new digital revenue streams with estimated revenue, explicitly screened against the Postal Service's status as a government agency. Builds on Tasks 1-3.
Why HSG
What this response demonstrates
The research is already moving
This portal is a working preview of the four research notes: a foreign-post capability matrix, a domestic competitor matrix, a scored UX friction register, and a legally screened opportunity register. We started before the bid so the OIG can judge the work, not a promise of work.
Practitioners of the thing being studied
HSG designs, ships, and operates digital products. A UX and monetization review lands differently when the reviewer has built checkout flows and instrumented conversion funnels, not only benchmarked them.
The government-agency screen is built in
Every revenue idea in our register carries a legal-feasibility rating grounded in 39 U.S.C. 404(e), the grandfathered nonpostal services, the Postal Service Reform Act of 2022, and the 39 U.S.C. 3641 market-test authority. Task 4 explicitly requires this screen; we treat it as a first-class dimension, not a caveat.
International depth without a boutique premium
Task 1 is comparative institutional analysis across national systems. Our benchmarking lead spent 38 years in the Senior Foreign Service doing exactly that discipline. The engagement is sized for the OIG's published ceiling, with Task 3 held under its 20 percent cap.
For the RISC Research team
Ten minutes in the instrument tells you more than ten pages of promises.
Every matrix cell, friction score, and opportunity rating is a preliminary finding we expect to defend in a kickoff meeting, and to verify and extend under the engagement. That is the standard the research notes would be built to.