Upcoming Audit Work

An Automated Guided Vehicle (AGV) is a commercial-off-the-shelf powered industrial vehicle modified to enable driverless operation. The Postal Service uses AGVs to move mail at select processing facilities. They are intended to reduce labor costs and introduce automation in Postal Service facilities. Our objective is to evaluate the Postal Service’s use of Automated Guided Vehicles in mail processing operations.

Billing determinants are spreadsheets that Postal Service employees manually produce to report volume and revenue for every Postal Service price within each class of market dominant mail. The Postal Service uses billing determinants to ensure that price adjustments do not exceed the price cap for each market dominant products nor its price-floor for competitive products. Our objective is to ensure the Postal Service accurately calculates the billing determinates it submits as part of its Annual Compliance Report. The scope of our audit will be evaluating competitive billing determinants from FY2018 through FY2022.

To help ensure established performance standards are met, the Postal Service measures the time taken to deliver a mailpiece or package from acceptance to delivery by leveraging electronic documentation (eDoc), Intelligent Mail barcodes, and information collected from both handheld sampling devices and mail processing equipment scans. In FY 2019, more than 17.4 billion (23.4 percent) of commercial mailpieces were excluded from service performance measurement due to various reasons. Our objective is to evaluate progress made to reduce mail excluded from the service performance measurement.

The Mobile Delivery Device (MDD) is a handheld device used by carriers to accomplish real-time delivery tracking of packages, and scanning on time delivery is an important measure of success for the Postal Service. To accommodate growth in package volume and to take advantage of evolving technology, the Postal Service replaced their legacy MDDs with MDD Tech Refresh. The deployment of the new devices was completed on September 30, 2022. 

Our objective is to assess the security controls of the Mobile Delivery Device Tech Refresh deployed at U.S. Postal Service facilities. Our scope will include the security review of the devices and supporting infrastructure. 
 

The Postal Service developed a plan to handle the large increase in package and mail volume that was expected to occur during peak mailing season. The Postal Service developed its fiscal year (FY)  2023 peak season preparedness plan to build upon the successes it had during the prior peak season by planning to hire additional employees, deploy additional machines, and acquire facility space. Our objective is to evaluate the Postal Service’s performance during the FY 2023 Peak Mailing Season and the implementation of its peak season preparedness plan.