The Obama administration is putting ‘real pressure’ on the NTIA a...
The Obama administration is putting “real pressure” on the NTIA and its vendors to devise an electronically downloadable converter box coupon that would speed delivery of the vouchers to consumers, said an official with intimate knowledge of the coupon…
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program. The administration thinks it’s antiquated in the Internet age to send coupons through the U.S. Postal Service, even at the faster first-class rate, the official said. The Obama transition team broached the idea of an electronic coupon in early January when it began pushing for DTV delay legislation that would also require the NTIA to send coupons by pre-sorted first-class mail rather than use the slower, less-costly “standard” rate that the agency used for all of 2008, the official said. But the NTIA and contractor IBM have resisted electronic coupons for fear they carry a high risk of waste, fraud and abuse, the official said. The main worry is electronic coupons are hard to track and the NTIA would be unable to tie them reliably to the database of residential addresses it uses now to process the physical coupons, the official said. The NTIA will pay IBM $1.02 million through March 31 to mail 4.6 million coupon-bearing envelopes by pre-sorted first-class at 22 cents apiece, a Feb. 27 contract amendment said.