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The U.S. Postal Service's financial picture has been looking pretty good. There's no doubt the postmaster general has done a yeoman's job in keeping a firm grip on the postal fisc. Once again, it looks as if the USPS will finish its fiscal year with a reasonable amount of cash on hand.

Thus far, however, the postal service's act has been one-sided — that is, cost-sided. Very little about anything resembling a strategic plan for increasing future mail volume and revenue. The time the USPS bought by fat-trimming is running out. If that's all it has, another fiscal dilemma will be unavoidable. And one suspects it'll be a lot worse if reform is enacted and the USPS doesn't move quickly enough to transform its governmental-bureaucratic culture into something more entrepreneurial.

When the postmaster general testified before the President's Commission on the Postal Service, he said the USPS had only one real asset to market — its rate schedule. Somehow the dawning of that realization some three years ago should've been enough to stimulate an exploration of how that schedule could be re-engineered to meet the changing needs of a 21st century business environment.

For the past three years the USPS has been playing its cards close to the vest. Or, to use the jargon currently in fashion at L'Enfant Plaza, it's been doing its thing “under the radar screen.”

Maybe the USPS has an ace or two up its sleeve — that is, a plan to boost mail volume and revenue, and add real value to mail as a business medium. If the aces are there, the time is fast coming to show them. One of these days the Board of Governors, the General Accounting Office or Congress itself is going to call the postal service's hand to see what it's been holding. It'd be downright embarrassing to find that all it has is bluster and bluff and not enough to beat even a simple pair.

OK, the past several months' work on reform and the rate case have commanded much of the USPS' attention. Still, a $70 billion organization with more than 700,000 employees should be able to do at least a little multitasking.

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GENE A. DEL POLITO is president of the Association for Postal Commerce (PostCom) in Arlington, VA.