City Delivery Office Efficiency - San Francisco 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, San Francisco District city carriers delivered over 1.5 billion mailpieces on 2,116 routes to more than 1.2 million delivery points. City delivery office workhours totaled 1,430,600 for this period.
Our objective was to assess the office efficiency of city delivery operations in the San Francisco District.
What The OIG Found
The San Francisco District has opportunities to enhance efficiency in city delivery office operations. We found the San Francisco District’s percent to standard, a measurement used to assess office efficiency, was 116.93 percent, 11.85 percentage points above the national average of 105.08 percent. A percent to standard score greater than 100 percent indicates performance is less than the desired standard. In 2014, 32 of the San Francisco District’s 52 delivery units (62 percent) used 158,847 more office workhours, or about 19 more minutes of office time per day per city carrier route, than necessary. These additional workhours cost $7 million in 2014.
These conditions occurred because mail sometimes arrived late, the mail mix was incorrect, or carriers engaged in time wasting practices. Also, integrated operating plans (used to establish appropriate staffing levels and reporting times for carriers) were outdated or non-existent. Finally, managers did not enforce policies and procedures. Eliminating the extra workhours would increase overall efficiency at the delivery units and allow a onetime cost avoidance of about $7.2 million in the following year.
We also identified inadequate safeguards over stamp stock and money orders valued at $37,542 at four 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 recommend the, district manager, San Francisco District, eliminate 158,847 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.