Major Initiatives Of The Department Of Posts In The Last 18 Months Jan 16, 2016

Transforming physical network into digital network

• 27,500 Post Offices, mail offices and administrative offices networked into a country-wide W N making it the largest single-organization W N in the country. Disaster Recovery Centre (DRC) at Mysore operationalized on 15th May 2015.

W N has linked all the Post Offices to the Data Centre facility at Mumbai and enabled Department to roll out Core Banking Solution, Core Insurance, Core System Integrator applications that all operate on a common database and help customers access their accounts/policies from any Post Office as well as on the internet.

• Core Banking Solution (CBS) rolled out in 8623 Post Offices along with 125 TMs. CBS shall be rolled-out in all 25,000 Departmental POs by 31st March 2016.
• Core Insurance Solution (CIS) rolled out in 19,537 Post Offices and shall be rolled out in all 25,000 Departmental POs by 31st December 2015.
• Upto 31st March 2016, solar powered, biometric hand-held devices with connectivity shall be supplied to about 20,000 rural Branch Post Offices. The application for these hand-held devices is being developed by Infosys and User Acceptance Testing is scheduled for December 2015. All 130,000 devices would be rolled-out by March 2017.

Benefits of Hand-held device to the rural citizen 

1. Electronic transactions- Booking and delivery of Speed Post, registered mail, money orders, sale of stamps and postal stationery will be done through these devices and paper receipt shall be generated
2. instantaneously thereby eliminating chances of overcharging and other problems associated with manual transactions. Savings Bank deposits & withdrawals, PLI/RPLI premium deposits and loan/claim payments will also be done electronically on these devices.
3. Immediate uploading of transaction data and financial  reconciliation- Using mobile connectivity, data pertaining to all transactions done on the hand-held devices shall be uploaded onto the central server. E-Money order will reach the destination post office instantaneously unlike present day where the money order is digitized at the nearest computerized Post Office and leads to delay in delivery. All financial transactions shall also be reconciled immediately without any manual intervention and Cash on Delivery amount collected in the village shall be immediately credited to the account of e-Commerce Company. Similarly the artisans would be able to fulfill e-commerce orders and receive immediate payment for their sold products online. This will have a positive impact on the overall economy of the villages.
4. Automatic track and trace- Speed Post and Registered letters/parcels and money remittances will be trackable at the Branch Post Office level and booking/delivery information will also be uploaded to central server immediately.
5. Fraud and leakage elimination- As Savings Bank and Postal Life Insurance transactions will be done on a real-time basis and through immediate generation of receipt and voice message, chances of fraud would be eliminated. Biometric authentication of MNREGS and social security beneficiaries at the time of pay-out would also reduce leakage in the schemes
6. Post Offices as Common Service Centres- Branch Post Offices shall be able to work as Common Service Centres and offer services such as Railway Reservation, online bill payment for electricity and water utilities, mobile and DTH recharge, insurance policy premium payments & transactions for partner banks/insurance companies/mutual funds etc

Promoting Financial Inclusion 

• Number of Post Office Savings accounts increased from 30.86 Crore to 33.53 Crore and total deposits of POSB accounts and Cash Certificates to Rs 6.4 Lakh Crore.
• More than 75 lakh Sukanya Samriddhi Yojana accounts opened with a cumulative investment of more than Rs 2100 Crore since launch on 22nd January 2015. Public Sector Banks have opened a total of 1,08,478 accounts upto 31st August 2015.
• More than 1.4 Crore Kisan Vikas Patras sold, attracting an investment of more than Rs 12,400 Crore since launch on 18th November 2014.

Banks are yet to sell any KVP.

• Launch of PM Suraksha Bima Yojana and PM Jeewan Jyoti Yojana for Post Office Savings Bank account holders in CBS Post Offices on 7th September 2015 after approval of Ministry of Finance in ugust 2015.SO far, more than 50,000 policies have been sold to POSB customers.
• Increase in maximum sum assured in Postal Life Insurance from Rs 20 Lakh to Rs 50 lakh and for Rural PLI from Rs 5 lakh to Rs 10 lakh in order to provide more investment opportunities to customers and also increase claim amount to nominees in case of death.
• Driving e-Commerce revolution in rural and semi-urban India 
• Department has tied-up with Flipkart, Snapdeal, Amazon, YepMe, Shopclues etc for delivering e-Commerce pre-paid as well as Cash on Delivery (CoD) orders. Amazon the largest business partner in e-Commerce (Rs 35 Crore revenue in the current FY from Amazon)
• Parcel revenue which registered 2% decline in 2013-14, registered 37% growth in 2014-15. 117% growth in parcel revenue till 31st October 2015 in the current FY.
• Rs 800 Crore COD collection by DoP so far and this figure this likely to
• cross Rs 1500 Crores by the end of the current FY.
• 48 integrated state-of-the-art parcel centres have been created for booking, processing and delivery of e-Commerce parcels. 9 more such Centres are being established in the current FY.

Speed Post 

Speed Post revenue growth in the current FY is more than 16% 

Setting up of Payments Bank 

1. RBI has accorded in-principle approval for setting up of Department of Posts Payments Bank on 7th September 2015. As per this approval, DoP has to operationalize the Payments Bank before 6th March 2017. 
2. Public Investment Board (PIB) memo was circulated by the Department among stake-holder Ministries/Departments, for which comments have been received and are being incorporated in the final memo. After PIB recommendations, final approval for setting up of Payments Bank shall be obtained from the Cabinet. 
3. RFP is being circulated among the bidders shortlisted through EOI for selecting a Consultant for the Project 

Common Service Centres 

• Department has signed an Agreement with Common Service Centre, an SPV under DeitY, on 12th October 2015, for rolling out Common Service Centre services in rural Post Offices and also appointing existing CSCs as Post Office franchisee. 
• A total of 22 CSCs are being rolled out in rural Post Offices of 4 pilot Circles (Bihar, UP, MP and Gujarat) before 31st December 2015.
• Source : Sa Post Blog