The President’s fiscal year (FY) 2022 Budget provides funding of $263,000,000 to the U.S. Postal Service Office of Inspector General (OIG) for ongoing operational expenses. This document presents perspective and context for our budget needs and areas of focus for FY 2022.
It also highlights prior year accomplishments and activities. FY 2020 was a historic year for the Postal Service and for the country. The impacts of the COVID-19 virus were widespread and long-lasting, and the Postal Service and our OIG were both affected significantly.
Our special agents and auditors continued their work throughout the crisis, despite widespread health and travel restrictions. Our OIG also shifted substantial resources to focus on voting by mail and quickly responded to numerous allegations and issues in order to protect the integrity of political and election mailings.
Over 500 agents and auditors conducted site visits at about 1,800 delivery units and more than 100 processing facilities during the general election in November 2020 and the Georgia Senate run-off election in January 2021 to ensure that the Postal Service was processing election mail correctly and efficiently. We also conducted various investigations into allegations related to improperly handled ballots.
Since the Postal Service is part of the nation’s critical infrastructure, our OIG continually aligns its mission resources to concentrate on the agency’s highest-risk areas. The impact of COVID is a new area of risk and will be an area of focus for our OIG into the foreseeable future. We have historically focused on service to Postal customers along with costs and operational efficiencies, and we expect this work to increase as the agency implements changes under the new Postmaster General.
We will provide additional focus on transparency into service impacts resulting from ongoing cost reduction initiatives as well as from the recently announced 10-year plan. Additionally, our OIG has invested significant resources towards combatting the nationwide opioid epidemic and the distribution of narcotics through the mail.
We achieve significant results with an efficient, lean staff, with only one OIG employee for every 637 postal workers. Including the investigative results which completely cover the cost of our budget each year, we returned nearly $30 in total financial impact for every $1 invested in our budget.
A fully funded OIG is vitally important in protecting our nation’s Postal Service and the President’s FY 2022 Budget of $263,000,000 will allow our OIG to continue to conduct critical ongoing oversight work.