The D.C. government sends out millions of letters to its citizens.
But vast quantities of the mailings come back marked “undeliverable.”
A recent study of jury response by the Council for Court Excellence, for instance, found that nearly a third of jury summonses were sent to the wrong address.
D.C.’s jury lists are compiled from lists from other government agencies.
Government officials say that they’re dealing with a highly mobile population: university students and government officials who come and leave quickly.
But not all of the mis-addressed mail can be attributed to D.C.’s high population turnover. The District government has no centralized standards for filling out address forms. This leads to countless duplicates and wrong addresses, government officials say.
Some D.C. agencies are trying to fix the problem on their own. Earlier this year, the Department of Motor Vehicles implemented a computerized format that conforms to U.S. Postal Service standards. Where someone who lived on Pennsylvania Avenue, for instance, might have written their address as “Penn Ave.,” the new computer system won’t allow that entry now, DMV director Anne Witt said.
“It helps if you make sure that the address you put in actually exists,” Witt said.
Vincent Morris, a spokesman for Mayor Anthony Williams, said the city doesn’t require its agencies to adopt centralized mailing standards.
“We would hope that other departments follow the lead of DMV, to the extent practical,” Morris said.
But the DMV may have other problems with its mailing. U.S. Postal Service spokeswoman Luvenia Hyson said the department has suffered from a high “undeliverable” rate in part because the envelopes it uses aren’t compatible with the automated mail sorters.
“It’s a problem that can happen with any type of business mail,” she said.
Witt said a member of her staff met with postal officials earlier this year to discuss the “undeliverable” mail. The staff member brought with her a stack of returned envelopes and postal officials told her that about half of that mail should have been delivered, Witt said.
DMV spokeswoman Janis Hazel says the department uses an outside contractor for its mail and “we’re doing what is required, and we don’t know why some of our mail is coming back.”
Returned mail
» Witt says the DMV has between 50 and 60 pieces of mail returned every day.
» The returned mail includes driver’s license renewals and other important notices.
