U.S. Postal Service

Under its National Change of Address program, the Postal Service collects and widely disseminates change-of-address information reported by postal customers. To do this, the Postal Service uses 24 licensees--primarily mail-advertising and credit information firms--to provide the address-correction service. The Postal Service's oversight of the program has fallen short in the timely prevention and detection of possible breaches of the licensing agreement and potential violations of federal privacy law. GAO identified weaknesses in Postal Service oversight relating to (1) "seeding" files to detect unauthorized uses of addresses, (2) auditing the performance of software that licensees use to match their mailing lists with National Change of Address program files, (3) reviewing program advertisements that licensees propose to use, and (4) investigating complaints about the program. In GAO's view, use of program data by licensees to create a "new-movers list" would be inconsistent with the limitations imposed by the Privacy Act. The Postal Service did not explain in the acknowledgment form--to be signed by customers of licensees--that program data are not to be used to create or maintain such lists.

GAO found that: (1) the Postal Service uses 24 licensees to collect and disseminate address-correction information; (2) the licensees provide address services to other private firms and organizations in accordance with standard licensing agreements; (3) the Postal Service has been unable to prevent, detect, or correct potential breaches in the licensing agreement; (4) the Postal Service audits the software that licensees use to match their mailing lists with NCOA files, reviews NCOA advertisements that licensees propose to use, and investigates complaints concerning the NCOA program; (5) Postal Service officials believe that the NCOA licensing agreement helps to ensure that federal privacy guarantees are not compromised through the operation of the NCOA program; (6) the Postal Service has not expressed a clear and consistent position regarding the use of NCOA data to create new-movers lists; (7) the Postal Service failed to terminate the license of any licensee that failed successive process audits in 1992; (8) the NCOA program office is not terminating licensees that fail to maintain address-matching software or enforcing the performance standards prescribed in the license agreements; and (9) the Postal Service needs to enforce these limitations to ensure that the use of NCOA-derived data is limited to the purpose for which it was intended.

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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