It’s that time of year when we are required by the IG Act to issue our Semiannual Report to Congress — or SARC, as we call it — which chronicles our activities for the preceding six months. Our Spring 2022 SARC covers the period October 1, 2021, through March 31, 2022, and it contains a wealth of details about our work during that time.

It also notes that we are marking our 25th anniversary. Congress passed legislation in 1996 to establish the Postal Service Office of Inspector General as an independent entity led by an Inspector General reporting directly to the USPS Governors. Before then, the Postal Inspection Service conducted oversight of the Postal Service and reported to the Postmaster General.

In the past 25 years we have continued to innovate and try new things to bring a deeper understanding of our work to our stakeholders, which include Congress, the mailing industry, and the American public. And we’re still doing it. In our Spring SARC, for instance, we note how we recently reorganized our audit group and created one team to focus on postal-facility related work by geographic area. The Spring SARC also heralds the launch of the new Closed Investigations dashboard on our website. (Check it out for some really interesting details!)

More specifically, during the six-month SARC reporting period, we issued 51 audit reports, management advisories, and white papers, and the Postal Service accepted 88 percent of our recommendations. We completed 1,473 investigations that led to 448 arrests and more than $113 million in fines, restitutions, and recoveries, more than $14 million of which was returned to the Postal Service. Take a look at our Summary of Performance graphic above for even more data.

You can also check out the complete Spring 2022 SARC as well as see its highlights on our new SARC story map. And let us know below if you have ideas on other ways for us to share our work with you!