Postal Information Intranet
The postal information intranet is the information technology infrastructure
supporting the development of postal industry. The network integrates the
functions of services, production, management and decision making by employing
computer and communications network technologies. In 2000, China Post built up a
backbone network which was connected to 236 information centers of central
cities and widely used in the production, operation, management as well as all
the service processes. Through the ¡°83¡±e-post website and the ¡°1185¡±customers
service center, the network is also integrated with the public telephone network
and public digital communications network.
The year 2005 witnessed the remarkable achievement in postal IT. With the
operation of 19 nationwide application systems including the unified version of
postal green card, the postal information intranet has been transferred from a
platform with basic functions to a new one featuring advanced technology. The
intranet has been expanded with larger capacity and the structure has been
further optimized, which gave stronger support to the system applications.
Meanwhile, the standardized management of the intranet was strengthened and the
reliability and stability of the operation of the whole network was improved,
thus basically guaranteed the normal running of each application system.
In 2005, a quantum leap was made in application system development. 19 national
applications, including postal savings unified version system, agent insurance
system, mail center system, EMS Kahala updated system, name and address data
system, financial portfolio system, were successfully developed and connected to
the postal intranet. Those applications cover a variety of businesses, ranging
from postal financial services, traditional postal services to information
services. They provided a robust IT support for the relevant services, improved
service level and quality, enhanced the competitiveness, and generated
well-recognized economic performance for the postal enterprises. All these
progress demonstrated the role of information network in boosting the services.
In 2005, the information network strengthened its support for business by
integrating the network resources. The gradual concentration of the service data
at provincial centers and the national center facilitated the development of the
large smart storage system based on SAN and contributed to the effective
integration of database server mainframes and service data.
The steady advancement of electronic infrastructure construction in 2005
facilitated the improvement of service level and quality and the development of
information-based services. Achievements included the provision of agent telecom
service, 11185 call center service with increasing tickets distribution and
handling volume, the construction of postal short-message access system and the
online payment on 183 website. The transaction volume of online payment reached
over RMB 1.5 billion. The daily visiting to the website reached 20,000 times,
among which 6,000 were inquiries for the track and trace of EMS. CPCA issued
2,209 certificates in the year. The third-party payment platform and payment on
other websites were realized. The tests on YEEPAY, YN58, Capitel and Federal
Software have been completed and services have been provided to customers.
During the process of informatization, the training for information technology
talents was enhanced and the team of professional technicians was formed. By the
end of 2005, there were more than 8,000 IT technicians, among which over 1,300
were professional in provincial post bureaus. These people undertook the
construction of various projects as well as the maintenance of postal savings
service points, computerized branch offices, ATM, POS, the computers and
equipment in information centres and 19 application systems.