What is holding back paperless government?

I have two questions for you:

1. Why can’t I send an electronic message to a mailing address?

2. Why can I get my credit card statement and my mortgage statement electronically, but I can only get my Social Security Statement and County Taxes in the mail?
   

If I know where you live, I can send you a box of chocolates, a DirecTV ad, or a campaign brochure, but I can’t send you something
electronically… Why? This makes no sense and kills a lot of trees.

Sometimes the most obvious questions have the most confusing answers. It’s possible that the privatization of the Postal Service in the 1980s created a situation where
the Postal Service needs to focus on maintaining its $68B revenue stream in paper mail delivery rather than promote a more modern form of delivery. That doesn’t really matter to me, but what does matter is how a new approach to address-based digital delivery could save the government a ton of money and help the environment.

I’ve posted a longer discussion about this that’s a little more GovDelivery-centric in the GovDelivery User’s Group. I hope you’ll check it out.

Meanwhile, you can sign up for free to get your own”Digital Mail Box” through our partnership with Zumbox here and let me know what you think. It’s pretty cool… you sign up online and then they mail a letter to your house with an activation code so you can verify your mailing address.

What can we do to get members of the public to open their own “digital postal mail” box so govt. can reach people based on mailing address and start saving money and trees?