Mail Management

The Department of Veterans Affairs Can Further Reduce Its Postage Costs Gao ID: GGD-91-44 March 19, 1991

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed opportunities to reduce the Department of Veterans Affairs' (VA) postage costs through improved mail management.

GAO found that: (1) during fiscal year 1989, VA incurred $48 million in postage costs and obtained about $6.3 million in postage discounts; (2) VA could save an additional $4 million annually by increasing its mailing of prescription drugs and other pharmacy items at the fourth-class rate; (3) VA could alleviate concerns regarding the timeliness of fourth-class services to some areas by changing its prescription renewal schedule policy or using alternative private-sector mail carriers when it did not consider fourth-class service adequate; and (4) VA had no plans to increase its use of fourth-class mail, since it was considering the possibility of centralizing the prescription mailings, but those plans were in the proposal stage and would not be implemented until 1992 or 1993.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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