Postal Service adopts open-source tracking system

There's nothing more frustrating than a lost letter in the mail. But now the U.S. Postal Service has come up with a foolproof way to track the mail, using an open source tool for its Product Tracking System (PTS).

The USPS has upgraded its 15-year-old mainframe-based system to handle more transactions and lower the cost of the system. It's a good idea for an agency that recently reported that it's billions of dollars in the red. The plan is to standardize on cheaper Linux operating system, John Byrne, manager of application development and head of USPS' Integrated Business Solutions Centers, tells Government Computer News.

The task was not been an easy one, though. The USPS had to figure out how to take source code written in Cobol and reuse in Linux, according to Byrne. He said that the migration work started last summer and was completed at the beginning of the year with the improved PTS on mainframe Linux.

This is certainly a case study for many other big agencies, such as the Internal Revenue Service, to come up with better and more efficient systems to do the work. The task is challenging, but it can be done.

For more on the USPS conversion:
- check out this Government Computer News article