UPU OKs International Address Standard
The Universal Postal Union's Standards Board approved an international address standard, according to Joe Lubenow, president of Lubenow and Associates, a postal consulting firm in Chicago and a participant in developing the standard.The address standard lets different posts worldwide identify whether a given address is properly formatted according to the address rules of each specific country of destination.
"The standard is a means by which various postal authorities around the world will be able to point to a single source for saying 'This is how we are going to communicate our addressing standards,'" said Chris Lien, postal affairs co-chair at Firstlogic, La Crosse, WI, a postal software and solutions vendor.
The standard was approved at the UPU board's meeting in Brussels in February, Lubenow said. The standard still needs development of more templates before it can be implemented worldwide. Currently 25 countries, including the United States, have agreed to participate.
"We are still very much on the early steps of this," Lien said. "But with the UPU endorsing it, we've seen significant validity in acceptance of this."
