Above: Tracy Hackshaw. Photo by Mark Lyndersay

BitDepth#1521 for July 28, 2025

According to Kevin Hernandez, Digital Inclusion Expert at the Universal Postal Union (UPU), the union’s Connect.Post project plans to “Help bridge the digital divide by connecting all post offices to the internet and transforming them into one.”

Hernandez was speaking at a the World Summit on the Information Society
in Geneva on July 11.

The UPU is a UN agency dedicated to the postal sector and recently conducted a survey of digital services in 152 countries (out of 192 members) and found that posts are using more digital services than expected.

“These services go well beyond the postal sector. Posts are not just offering digital postal services, they are offering digital services across multiple sectors. This is super exciting from an inclusion standpoint because there are over 650,000 post offices across the world, and the majority are located in rural areas, more specifically in places where people are less likely to use the Internet and where people are more at risk of being left behind. So digital services offered by posts have significant potential to improve inclusion.”

“We found that 71 per cent of posts are promoting economic and digital inclusion by offering e-commerce services, 58 per cent are promoting financial and digital inclusion through digital financial services and 51 per cent are promoting social and digital inclusion through government services.”

“Seventy per cent are directly contributing to bridging the digital divide by promoting at least one digital connectivity service or solution while 34 per cent of posts are showing signs of becoming a one-stop shop for economic, financial, social and digital inclusion by providing digital financial services, e-commerce services and e-government services, all under the same roof.”

This concentration of services also raises concerns about digital vulnerabilities and the potential for disruptions for digital systems operated by postal systems, which would in turn impact users least prepared to respond to cyber attacks.

Just 40 per cent of posts have implemented incident response and cybersecurity risk management plans and those operating in three critical regions, Latin America and the Caribbean, Asia and the Pacific and Africa are least likely to have implemented these critical measures.

In the region specifically, Nigel Cassimire, Deputy Secretary General Caribbean Telecommunications Union (CTU) noted that while posts in the Caribbean are modernising and digitizing and mail has dropped significantly in volume and revenue, posts are becoming competitive in the courier, delivery and logistics market.

Caribbean governments are in the process of digital transformation and implementing e-government services. In Trinidad and Tobago, digital service outreach has been emphasised in community centres instead of through upgraded post offices.

TTPost does offer online applications for driver’s permit renewals and vehicle certified copies and online payments for traffic citations and its Hummingbird Express International Courier Service is a player in local e-commerce solutions.

“It is incumbent on postal operators to be aware of the attendant cyber risks and design their services for resiliency,” Cassimire said.

“The CTU hasn’t been traditionally dealing with postal services, but in 2022, we met with the UPU and were apprised of the modernization and digitalization thrust going on in the postal sector, and we realized then that there were opportunities for us to work with the UPU to enhance the quality of our postal services in the Caribbean.”

As part of that strengthening of digital security, the UPU offers .POST as a top level domain (trust .POST/) reserved for the postal and logistics sector and a supporting Information Sharing and Analysis Center (ISAC), intended to strengthen the network it hopes to build.

“The .POST identity will allow postal network operators and the private sector to build out services that ensure a secure identity for the postal industry,” said Tracy Hackshaw, Head of the .POST Business Management Unit of the UPU.

Individuals cannot get a .POST domain and applicants must meet security and other registration requirements for the domain.

“In addition to this overarching top level domain, the support provided by the UPU will reduce your cost overall and increase your visibility. Linked to that we have our shared services platform where you can access e-mail hosting, secure e-mail services, web hosting and e-commerce services.”

“Our secureDNS management services require compliance with robust security protocols that allow you to deal with cyber incidents proactively because many of these incidents are infiltrated through the DNS system.”

“This trust mark will deliver a digital trust infrastructure for the entire postal logistics sector and in doing so, increase the security of the full scope of services delivered by .POST.”