The U.S. Postal Service, Office of Inspector General (OIG) intends to award a contract to a qualified organization to assist OIG staff in examining innovation management processes at ten major U. S. corporations to identify best practices/processes that can be adapted for use by the U. S. Postal Service.
According to the notice posted on the Federal Business Opportunities website:
The U.S. Postal Service, Office of Inspector General (OIG) intends to award a labor hour contract to a qualified organization to assist OIG staff in examining innovation
management processes at ten major U. S. corporations to identify best practices/processes that can be adapted for use by the U. S. Postal Service.
Background
The OIG is an independent entity within the U.S. Postal Service. Its mission, in part, is to conduct and supervise objective and independent audits, reviews, and
investigations relating to Postal Service programs and operations to promote economy, efficiency, and effectiveness; and keep the Postal Service Governors, Congress, and Postal Service management informed of problems, deficiencies, and corresponding corrective actions.
Under the leadership of the Inspector General, the Assistant Inspector General for Audit is responsible for the Office of Audit (OA). Within OA, the Planning and Strategic Studies directorate will examine innovation processes at ten major U.S. corporations to identify best practices/processes that can be adapted for use by the U. S. Postal Service. The OIG will issue an audit reporting the results of this effort.
The audit report will discuss:
- The Postal Service’s current innovation strategy and practices;
- Obstacles to effective, efficient innovation;
- Benchmarking results; and
Innovation management best practices that can be adapted for use by the Postal Service.
Innovation is the development of new products, services and processes. Innovation differs from invention, in that invention imagines a solution to a problem, but
innovation turns invention into something that creates value.
Essential components of innovation include:
1. Leadership that understands and supports the role of innovation in company success.
2. A clearly articulated innovation strategy that is consistent with the company’s business strategy.
3. Methods for creating and capturing new ideas from multiple internal and external sources.
4. An objective process for deciding which innovations to pursue and continuously evaluating progress.
5. The ability to simultaneously and cooperatively execute development and commercial activities.
6. A plan to extract value from an innovation over the entire lifecycle of a new product or service.
Identify and document best practices in innovation management. These best practices should present strategies the Postal Service can use to improve its innovation management efforts. The supplier can use benchmarking results and further research as needed to complete this task.
Sirs, off the top of my head…..
1) let the OIG continue their new policy of surveys of postal employees and overview their stories
2) utilize the already existing yet ignored of the ” E-Ideas” program. This is the old Employee Suggestion Program computerized that is now almost completely ignored by field managers because they refuse to give the employees access to the postal intranet. If a close examination of the e-ideas were to be done, the OIG would find that the number of employee suggestions for an organization of 700,000 people is abysmal. The original plan was to have a “employee kiosk” in each office allowing craft employees to do their personal lite blue business at work. The kiosks never showed up, and supervisors claim that they have “no time” to sign the employee on to the computer, hence no employee ideas.
3) with the USPS finances being what they are giving out research contracts to outside companies seems to be wasteful. Don’t we have enough brains inside the USPS to resolve most issues.
What are all the highly paid vice-presidents doing? don’t any of them have BA’s OR MBA’s or business experience? 4
4) Is there no other federal agency or group that the USPS can consult with that will not cost them a million dollars? I beleive that Pres. Obama has high tech groups within the administration that would help another agency.
5) Why do employees see the waste and come up with ideas that management will normally ignore without a second thought.
6)What kind of operating philisophy goes outside for help instead of going inside first?
and lucky #7) Does everyone in postal management believe they are so much smarter than all their employees that their is nothing that any employee can say that is worth considering? The answer to this seems to be yes given the lack of managerial participation in the employee suggestion program. I the employees are systematically denied any access to the postal intranet and cannot access it from their home computers, how, can they have any input.
The USPS sets up rules, regulations, programs, and guidelines at headquarters, and then completely ignores them in the field, with nobody ever held accountable. Question, at what level is anyone held accountable? ? ?
What the treasonous practices used in United States Supreme Court case 99-565 & supplement are no longer viable? You know the premeditated and orchestrated Coercion / Collusion / Corruption / Subterfuge / Subversion / Sabotage / Murder / Terrorism responsible for reducing government employees and avoiding liabilities, not to mention the total destruction of entire American families through terminal injustice and the term “Goin Postal” all by products of the American Holocaust.
What a load of horse shit.
First of all how much will this study cost and who will pay for it. Second if there were any good ideas out there in American Corporate world we would be able to pick up a product in a retail store that says made in America. Maybe they will arrange bailouts like the automakers. If this is the best they can do we are doomed.