A United States Postal Service plan to consolidate mail facilities could miss $750 million in potential savings, thanks to new delays to an effort that is already a year or more behind schedule, according to a government watchdog.
Postal Service officials have yet to collect data on how proposed service changes and office closings will affect its customers, let alone inform the public of what to expect ahead of the consolidation.
Competition from private carriers with more efficient practices has emptied out many USPS facilities, causing some to operate far below capacity at a high cost to taxpayers.
The agency has lost $26 billion in the past three years alone.
In December 2011, the Postal Service announced its plans to consolidate more than 200 of its nationwide mail offices in two phases.
USPS officials succeeded in regrouping 141 facilities over the next two years, saving the government an estimated $865 million annually.
The agency announced a second round of the Network Rationalization Initiative in 2012. Along with 82 additional consolidations, USPS officials proposed an overhaul of the agency’s service standards.
Postal Service carriers would no longer deliver periodicals and most first-class mail overnight, and the agency would push “a substantial portion” of two-day mail delivery to three-day.
In summer 2012, USPS officials set the deadline for completion of the initiative’s second phase for Feb. 1, 2014, promising to alert customers to any possible disruptions well in advance of the changes.
But just one week before the agency was set to unveil its reorganized infrastructure, the Postal Service changed the official deadline from Feb. 1 to “the effective date identified by the Postal Service in a future Federal Register Document.”
The postmaster general announced in June it had pushed the completion date back to January 2015.
The IG said postal officials have yet to perform the most basic preparations ahead of the restructure, such as studies of the impact of the planned service changes.
Postal officials claimed they plan to make analysis worksheets available to their facilities at the start of 2015, the same time the consolidations are slated for completion, the IG said.
The IG predicted customers may experience delayed mail and deliveries after 5 p.m. thanks to “unexpected workload” and “dissatisfaction” with the Postal Service brand.
By further delaying the consolidations and service updates, the Postal Service is missing out on an estimated $750 million each year in savings, the IG said.
Go here to read the full USPS IG report.
