Background
Business mailers accounted for approximately $16.2 billion of the Postal Service’s revenue through marketing and other large-scale mailings, of which $9.4 billion (58 percent) was generated through the PostalOne! application in fiscal year 2024. PostalOne! provides business mailers with a web-based alternative to manual business mail acceptance processes and interfaces with 45 different Postal Service systems to provide mailers a streamlined process for mail entry, payment, tracking, and reporting. As such, it is critical that changes to PostalOne! are communicated and managed effectively to avoid disruptions in service.
What We Did
Our objective was to determine whether the Postal Service appropriately implemented and communicated changes to PostalOne!.
What We Found
The Postal Service generally communicated PostalOne! changes to mailers effectively by using available resources—such as websites, alerts, briefings, and meetings—and made further improvements to communications with mailers. Further, although the Postal Service mostly followed its approved processes for change and problem management, opportunities exist to improve these processes. Specifically, the Postal Service can improve closure of changes, closure of high and critical incident tickets, and after-action reporting of incidents. Strengthening controls in the management of changes to PostalOne! can improve customers’ ability to use the application and reduce potential security risks.
Recommendations and Management’s Comments
We made four recommendations for the Postal Service to improve its change request processes, resolution of critical and high incident tickets, and after-action reporting and management agreed with all four. We consider management’s comments responsive to all four recommendations as corrective actions should resolve the issues identified in the report. Management’s comments and our evaluation are at the end of each finding and recommendation.
