GIS Gives United States Postal Service a Crime-Fighting Edge

Redlands, California—November 5, 2008—The United States Postal Service (USPS) Bank Service Act (BSA) Compliance Office is taking advantage of geographic information system (GIS) technology from ESRI to effectively detect suspicious activity, using sophisticated analysis and mapping to monitor millions of money order transactions across the United States. GIS maps show where suspicious activities may be occurring and link transactional data to reveal potential criminal patterns. Mapping and analysis also help USPS managers make sense of extensive transactional databases and millions of bits of data to ensure they comply with regulations. “There are a number of federal anti-money-laundering laws and regulations that directly impact the Postal Service as an issuer of money orders,” says Al Gillum, subject matter expert for the United States Postal Service BSA Compliance Office. “We have responsibilities to monitor transactions and identify potentially suspicious activity through postal money orders. We recognized GIS as a powerful tool to look at all our data. We can use it to bring data together, analyze it, and share it with others. We can then make decisions that are based on good intelligence.” ....more