PUSHING THE ENVELOPE BLOG

If it’s June, it’s time once again to share the results of our Spring Semiannual Report to Congress or SARC. We have been working diligently to promote the integrity, accountability, and efficiency of the U.S. Postal Service and its regulator, the Postal Regulatory Commission and have achieved significant milestones in the first half of the 2025 fiscal year.

When we think of combating mail theft, the OIG’s investigative work usually comes to mind. Every day, our special agents use analytics tools and investigative methods to detect and stop internal mail theft throughout the Postal Service’s network. Last fiscal year, our Office of Investigations made 449 arrests and closed more than 1,600 cases related to mail theft. To learn more about some of our mail theft cases, check out our Investigative Case Highlights.

The Postal Service Office of Inspector General (OIG) has a mission to guard against fraud, waste, and abuse. We are one of the most active OIGs, with nearly 2,200 arrests over the past five years. In this month’s blog, we focus on our fraud investigations. The total financial impact of our fraud investigations was almost $350 million in fiscal year 2024, with more than $25 million returned directly to the Postal Service.

When we sort through our mail, most of us don’t give much thought to the laws and regulations organizing the U.S. Postal Service. Throughout the world though, countries have established different postal models to balance access to postal services with financial sustainability. Some posts are focused on mail delivery; for others, mail is a very small part of their business. Some deliver six days a week; others deliver much less frequently. As mail volume declines across the world, countries are c

The OIG has a long history of auditing individual mail delivery units and processing plants in the field, though these audits were conducted independently of each other. In November 2021, we rolled out our Field Operations Review Team (FORT) to provide a faster and more comprehensive evaluation of local service issues. These field audits do not just look at problems at a single facility, they review several facilities to also look for interrelated issues affecting performance.