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