Background
In March 2021, the U.S. Postal Service released its 10-year strategic Delivering for America (DFA) plan to achieve financial sustainability and improve service. Since that time, the Postal Service has implemented significant changes in its transportation, package processing, and delivery network. This involved reducing operational costs by consolidating operations and moving mail from air networks to ground transportation, eliminating duplicate and unneeded routes. Additionally, the Postal Service implemented several service standard changes to enable network changes and improve on-time delivery.
What We Did
Our objective was to determine the impacts that network change initiatives have had on the Postal Service and its stakeholders. For this audit, we focused on cost, savings, and service performance impacts of the Postal Service’s network processing, transportation, and delivery initiatives from fiscal year (FY) 2016 through FY 2026, quarter 2.
What We Found
The Postal Service has made significant changes to its network in the first five years of the DFA plan reducing mail processing, transportation, and delivery costs. However, the financial position of the Postal Service has not improved, and the operational changes have coincided with service performance declines, with rural communities experiencing the most noticeable impacts. Additionally, the Postal Service does not have a long-term cost savings target nor does it track the financial impact of network change initiatives. Instead, it manages initiatives on an annual basis but does not have an overall program schedule and timeline to track and report long-term progress. We also found issues with network changes that could have been identified through better planning and modeling.
Finally, the organization is missing an opportunity to better standardize the network of facilities envisioned at the outset of the DFA plan. As a result, the Postal Service continues to operate a fragmented system that hampers nationwide decision-making, limits expected efficiencies, and complicates efforts to measure performance.
Recommendations and Management’s Comments
We made five recommendations to address the issues identified in the report, and management agreed with all five recommendations. We consider management’s comments responsive as corrective actions should resolve the issues identified in the report.
You could go to 5 day delivery??
You could push for more BOP and CBU delivery?
You have WAY too many salaried employees.
We have 2 “satellite offices” they were supposed
to NOT replace retiring clerks years back.
Both positions were filled by friends of the PM??
You have 2 offices each open for 4 hours a day.
Each making deposits “maybe” once a month??
It’s not difficult to fix, if you know whats wrong???
The memorandum in this report is addressed to seven vice presidents and two chief officers, and that gives you some insight into the problems the USPS faces. The report again points to service issues nationwide, yet with all of these executives the USPS can’t seem to get it right. The report points to management essentially working on the fly with no measurable targets that reflect goals. This was also pointed out during congressional hearings. Service standards have been lowered and the USPS still has difficulty meeting them. DFA has reduced some costs, but not at the level proposed and it can be argued that the subsequent poor service has done great harm to the USPS. The main issue that plagues the USPS is lack of accountability at the highest levels. Dejoy had it halfway correct, the network did need modernizing to some extent, but the executives and people running it should have been overhauled too. He didn’t, Steiner won’t, and the country is paying the price.