Postal services and ICTs in Japan

Abstract

Postal service organization has a long history of exploiting ICTs in its business operation as a government ministry, then as a public corporation from April 2004. In the business world, ICTs play a central role of promoting operational efficiency and customer services as well as fostering new businesses for further development. The Japanese postal service organization will be privatized in October 2007 and privatized companies will be forced to make further use of ICTs. In this article, the use of ICTs in the postal services will be described with a view to clarifying the relationship between the incentives of introducing ICTs and the institutional arrangements, namely a government ministry and a public corporation.