City Delivery Office Efficiency - Sierra Coastal District
Background
City delivery office operations cover all duties a U.S. Postal Service letter carrier performs in the office. These duties include casing mail (placing mail in delivery order), preparing parcels for delivery, and retrieving accountable items. City carriers are delivering more packages and fewer letters to more addresses each year. To accommodate these changes, the Postal Service must deliver the increased package volume while maintaining efficiency.
In 2014, Sierra Coastal District city carriers delivered over 2.1 billion mailpieces on 2,711 routes to more than 1.8 million delivery points. City delivery office workhours totaled 1,104,368 for this period.
Our objective was to assess the office efficiency of city delivery operations in the Sierra Coastal District.
What The OIG
Found The Sierra Coastal District has opportunities to enhance efficiency in city delivery office operations. We found the Sierra Coastal District’s percent to standard, a measurement used to assess office efficiency, was 117.85 percent, 12.76 percentage points above the national average of 105.09 percent. A percent to standard score greater than 100 percent indicates performance is less than the desired standard. In 2014, 46 of the Sierra Coastal District’s 99 delivery units (46 percent) used 172,601 more office workhours or about 16 more minutes of office time per day per city carrier route than necessary. We estimate these additional workhours cost over $7.4 million in 2014.
These conditions occurred because mail sometimes arrived late and the mail mix was sometimes incorrect, or some carriers engaged in time wasting practices. Also, integrated operating plans (establishes appropriate staffing levels and carrier reporting times) were non-existent or unsigned. Finally, managers did not always enforce policies and procedures. Eliminating the extra workhours would increase overall efficiency at the delivery units and allow a onetime cost avoidance of about $7.7 million in the following year.
We also identified inadequate safeguards over cash, money orders, and stamp stock valued at $170,690 at seven delivery units. Management immediately initiated corrective action on these matters; therefore, we are not making a recommendation on this issue.
What The OIG Recommended
We recommended the district manager, Sierra Coastal District, eliminate 172,601 workhours at the delivery units. We also recommended management prepare up-to-date integrated operating plans, eliminate inefficient office practices, and ensure adherence to Postal Service supervisor policies and procedures.