2. PRIVACY
The Privacy Office was established in November 2000 to protect the value privacy brings to the trusted Postal Service brand—both for traditional hard copy delivery and for electronic applications. To maintain privacy leadership, the Privacy Office stays current with the evolving privacy landscape, including legal and policy frameworks, new technologies, and best-in-class business models and practices. The office also ensures Postal Service compliance with the Privacy Act and Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

In 2002, the Privacy Office established online policies for the Postal Service’s web site, www.usps.com, that meet and exceed both government and commercial requirements and guidelines. These include implementation of the type of machine-readable privacy policies adopted by major industry, and included in the recent E-government Act for all government websites. The Office also developed a commercial e-mail policy to reflect best practices used in the marketing industry and to standardize Postal Service processes for sending marketing messages. In addition, uniform privacy clauses were developed for, and incorporated into, contracts and business processes.

In 2002, the General Accounting Office recognized the Postal Service’s privacy efforts as “focused and aggressive.” This was echoed by a www.usps.com customer survey that rated the Postal Service very highly for protection of online customer information. The Postal Service is represented on the Executive Privacy Strategy Group of Privacy and American Business, and the steering committee of Privacy 2001 and 2002, a leading privacy conference.