WASHINGTON - The U.S. Postal Service and the National Technical Information Service (NTIS) have agreed to jointly provide fulfillment, information management services and customer maintenance to federal agencies to enable them to serve the needs of their departments.

According to a signed memorandum of understanding, NTIS will work directly with the Postal Service's Stamp Fulfillment Services (SFS) located in Kansas City, MO. SFS manages a world-class fulfillment and inventory management operation in a unique climate-controlled underground environment. SFS can process more than 15,000 orders daily and maintains a state-of-the-art security system within the facility for warehousing, customer data maintenance and fulfillment opportunities.

The agreement, signed by the Postal Service's Vice President for Government Relations Marie Therese Dominguez and NTIS Director Bruce Borzino, sets the stage for both organizations to assist other federal agencies with fulfillment, warehousing, storage and data management services.

"The Postal Service's Stamp Fulfillment Service has great capacity and capabilities, not only for stamp customers but large retail customers, including the federal government," said Dominguez. She also noted how the SFS staff filled over 43,000 preorders in a single day when the Adopt a Shelter Pet stamps went on sale in April. "This collaboration with NTIS is the first of what the Postal Service believes are many positive opportunities to come with government agencies for data warehousing and fulfillment."

This interagency agreement is consistent with the March 2 announcement of the Postal Service's Delivering the Future plan. Among other things, the plan calls for the creation of new opportunities to generate needed revenue that will allow the Postal Service to compete more aggressively and fairly in the marketplace.

NTIS Director Borzino noted SFS' state-of-the-art security and distribution systems. "As such, SFS has the ability to augment NTIS's own information delivery, e-commerce and order processing infrastructure in serving federal agency information processing, fulfillment and distribution needs," Borzino said.

Located in Alexandria, VA, NTIS serves as the largest resource for government-funded scientific, technical, engineering and business-related technical reports available today, with 3 million publications covering 350 topics. It disseminates information in its collection to the public and provides fulfillment services for other government agencies.

The Postal Service receives no tax dollars for operating expenses, and relies on the sale of postage, products and services to fund its operations.