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 2015, Colorado/Wyoming District city carriers delivered over 1.7 billion mailpieces on 2,831 routes to more than 1.6 million delivery points. City delivery office workhours totaled 1,540,433 for this period.

Our objective was to assess the office efficiency of city delivery operations in the Colorado/Wyoming District.

What the OIG Found

The Colorado/Wyoming District has opportunities to enhance efficiency in city delivery office operations. The district’s percent to standard, a measurement used to assess office efficiency, was 120.76 percent — 12.53 percentage points above the national average of 108.23 percent. A percent to standard score greater than 100 percent indicates performance is less than the desired standard. From July 1, 2014, through June 30, 2015, 55 of the Colorado/Wyoming District’s 136 delivery units (40 percent) used 179,619 more office workhours than necessary, or about 17 more minutes of office time per day on each route. These additional workhour costs were more than $8.6 million.

These conditions occurred because mail sometimes arrived late and the mail mix was sometimes incorrect, or carriers engaged in time-wasting practices. Also, mail arrival profiles (used to establish staffing levels and mail arrival times by type and quantity) were non-existent, unsigned, or outdated. Finally, managers did not enforce policies and procedures. Eliminating extra workhours would increase overall efficiency at the delivery units and allow a cost avoidance of about $8.8 million in the next year.

We also identified inadequate safeguards over cash, money orders, and stamp stock at 12 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, Colorado/Wyoming District, eliminate 179,619 workhours at delivery units. We also recommended management eliminate inefficient office practices, prepare up-to-date mail arrival profiles, and ensure adherence to Postal Service policies and procedures.