Upcoming Audit Work

The U.S. Postal Inspection Service uses the expense purchase card to pay for day-to-day operational needs that cannot be satisfied through priority sources such as in-house excess material or from national or area contracts and ordering agreements. Postal Inspection Service employees with purchase card local buying authority must follow policies and procedures and obtain proper approval to ensure purchases are for official Postal Service business. Our objective is to assess the Postal Inspection Service’s expense purchase card use. 

As part of its Delivering for America plan, the Postal Service is redesigning its network of nearly 19,000 delivery units to reduce inefficient operations and costs. The Postal Service has identified key markets where it can aggregate several delivery units into fewer, larger Sorting and Delivery Centers (S&DCs) that are centrally located. As of November 2024, the Postal Service rolled out 83 S&DCs that encompassed 9,497 routes and expects to develop 36 more in 2025 that would encompass 3,313 routes. Our objective is to determine if the Postal Service evaluated and created routes accurately at the S&DCs. If not, estimate the cost impacts.

The Postal Service manages over 31,000 retail facilities nationwide where customers can buy stamps, mail packages, apply for passports, or other receive other retail services. These facilities should be accessible to customers, such as being open the hours and days as posted, not being closed for extended periods of time, and reachable by customers requiring additional assistance. Our objective is to assess customer access at Postal Service retail facilities. We will be focusing on retail hours, openings, suspensions, and physical accessibility.

The Postal Service relies on major mailers and consolidators who generate approximately $15.9 billion of the Postal Service’s revenue through marketing and other large scale mailings. Major mailers rely on PostalOne!, a complex system designed for business mailers that interfaces with 45 other Postal Service systems. PostalOne! allows business customers to begin the process of entering mail and allows for electronic access, documentation, business mail management, and payment. It is an internal and external facing site that provides automated scheduling services for drop shipment mailings, electronic documentation, postage statements, simplified mail acceptance, and verification and payment processes. The objective of this audit is to determine whether the Postal Service appropriately implemented and communicated changes to PostalOne!.

The In-office Cost System (IOCS) is the primary probability sampling system used to attribute and distribute labor costs of clerks, mail handlers, city carriers, and supervisors to those employees’ activities, particularly those activities relating to handling mail of all classes and rate categories and to providing extra services. IOCS provides a mechanism for attributing certain labor costs to activities performed within the Postal Service’s network. Our objective is to assess select internal controls over the Postal Service’s IOCS sampling processes. The scope of our audit is from fiscal year (FY) 2020 through FY 2024. The estimated report release date is March 2025.