AT low noise, in the period of wishes anesthetized by the pension reform, the ax fell: the traditional red stamp is no longer, since the 1er January. The classic “priority letter” is now replaced by a dematerialized format called “red e-letter”.
To send a document with this “e-modality”, it must be deposited before 8 p.m. on the La Poste site or from a post office. The document will be scanned, printed, put in an envelope and distributed the next day. A neo-process that the Shadoks would not deny and which is not without disadvantages in terms of confidentiality (the document now passes through several hands other than those of the user submitting the envelope). But, above all, in terms of use: 13 million French people, according to INSEE, or 18% of the population, are without Internet access.
Bad digital replica
The fact that La Poste comes to remove the red stamp is not in itself shocking or absurd. The habits of the French have, in fact, evolved and the figures attest to it: households sent 45 priority letters per year in 2010 against only five in 2021. Even beyond the red letter, there were 18 billion letters sent in 2008, half as much in 2018, and the forecasts are only counting on 5 billion in 2025! La Poste as a public service must of course adapt to the needs of the French
However, this disappearance is not insignificant and gives rise to two reflections. First, that of the effectiveness of the reforms to be carried out. In this case, why not have assumed to remove, purely and simply, said red stamp rather than creating a bad digital replica? Indeed, the green stamp (seventy-two hours delay) will continue to exist alongside e-mails and it will be sufficient to meet the needs of sending by post.
It is, alas, a very French evil to want to keep redundancies at all costs. By nature, we never reform anything in France, we stack up. To believe that a real Diogenes syndrome feeds the corridors of our institutions! The analysis is also valid for texts: we thus expect an increase of 65% for legal texts and nearly 46% for regulatory texts between 2002 and 2020.
La Poste is facing a transition, but it must take the right directions, assume its choices, and not create a new offer – too complex and irrelevant – whose failure can already be foreseen. Public services must adapt, but they must not disappear. However, the disappearance of the red stamp raises the question of regional planning and the digital divide, the subject of the second reflection.
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