Lanham, MD, December 12, 2005 — Group 1 Software, Inc., a Pitney Bowes company (NYSE: PBI), today announced that it has entered into an alliance relationship with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in which the CDC will distribute Group 1’s GeoStan, Spatial+ and other geocoding software.

The agreement provides for the integration of Group 1’s geocoding software into CDC’s National Electronic Disease Surveillance System (NEDSS). NEDSS is an initiative that promotes the use of data and information system standards to advance the development of efficient, integrated and interoperable public health surveillance systems at the federal, state and local level. With the agreement, users of NEDSS will incorporate standardized address management, spatial relationship determination, and geographic accuracy for monitoring the occurrence of hepatitis, tuberculosis and other infectious, chronic, and environmental diseases and conditions across the United States. 
 
Group 1’s GeoStan and Spatial+ are components of the company’s comprehensive Customer Communication Management (CCM) solution. GeoStan corrects, standardizes and associates geographic coordinates with addresses, a process known as geocoding. Spatial+ enables users to perform more powerful, accurate and comprehensive spatial analysis of location and other geographic criteria. CDC chose Group 1’s solutions based on better accuracy, easier integration and better overall performance compared to other technology.

"With the adoption of our technologies by the Centers for Disease Control, Group 1 Software continues its leadership in applications where location accuracy is critical," said Steve Walden, vice president & general manager, Group 1 Software. "The field of public health is yet one more critical domain where the benefits of Group 1's technology can make a vital impact. By helping to improve location accuracy across multiple disease monitoring programs, this alliance will enable health agencies throughout the country to deliver critical public health information in an exceptional manner."
 
To encourage widespread adoption within the CDC’s public health agencies, the NEDSS initiative provides select sites and other monitoring agencies with process and technology, including Group 1’s integrated geocoding software, at no initial cost to the agency.
 
“Methods for conducting public health surveillance may differ considerably by program and disease,” said Scott Danos, Public Health Analyst and Surveillance Team Lead at CDC. “By promoting and supplying better standards and tools, such as Group 1’s GeoStan and Spatial+, we can establish best practices for electronic data collection, identification, analysis and dissemination. Group 1 truly recognized this as a worthy goal in an era of rapidly spreading pandemics and other emerging public health challenges, and worked hard to make this partnership happen.”
 
The new CDC alliance continues the expansion of Group 1’s G-Force™ Alliance Program, announced earlier this year. The G-Force Program is a growing network of more than 100 strategic partners that provide CCM solutions including business geographics, data integration, data quality and direct marketing products and services.  As an industry leader in CCM, Group 1 attracts some of the world’s leading technology companies as partners, including Accenture, Convergys, Hewlett Packard, IBM, Kodak, LogicaCMG, Microsoft and Xerox.
 
About Group 1 Software
Group 1 Software, Inc. a wholly owned subsidiary of Pitney Bowes, develops software that provides a comprehensive Customer Communication Management solution, which maximizes the value of customer data and improves the efficiency and effectiveness of customer communications. Group 1 Software’s solutions are an essential component of enterprise applications, serving to consolidate, cleanse and enrich corporate data, and generate personalized business documents for multi-channel delivery, customer care and efficient business processing. The company’s solutions are utilized by over 3,500 organizations worldwide in the utilities, financial services/banking, GIS/mapping, retail, telecommunications, insurance and other industries, including Entergy, L.L. Bean, QVC, Siemens, Wal-Mart and Wells Fargo.
 
About the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is one of the 13 major operating components of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which is the principal agency in the United States government for protecting the health and safety of all Americans and for providing essential human services, especially for those people who are least able to help themselves. Since it was founded in 1946 to help control malaria, CDC has remained at the forefront of public health efforts to prevent and control infectious and chronic diseases, injuries, workplace hazards, disabilities, and environmental health threats. For more information on the CDC’s NEDSS please visit http://www.cdc.gov/nedss/
 
GeoStan, Spatial+, Group 1, Group 1 Software and G-Force are trademarks or registered trademarks of Group 1 Software, Inc. All other brand names, trademarks and registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners.