U.S. Postal Service

The Postal Service's national change of address program is intended to improve the quality of addresses on mail by providing business mailers with accurate, properly formatted change-of-address data that are automation compatible. To do this, the Service collects change-of-address information reported by postal customers nationwide and sends corrected addresses through several private firms licensed to provide address correction services. A recent audit found that the program saved the Service nearly $1.2 billion in rehandling costs associated with forwarding mail in fiscal year 1998. GAO pointed out in a 1996 report that the program was operating without clearly delineated procedures and sufficient management attention to always prevent, detect, and correct the inappropriate release or use of change-of-address data. (See GAO/GGD-96-119, Aug. 1996.) This report discusses the steps that the Service has taken in response to the 1996 report and whether any additional actions are needed to strengthen the Service's oversight of the program.

GAO noted that: (1) as recommended, the Service has developed and implemented written procedures that addressed its NCOA program oversight and control responsibilities for: (a) using seed records to help detect the unauthorized disclosure of NCOA data by licensees, should it occur; and (b) reviewing, responding to, and documenting NCOA-related complaints and inquiries from postal customers and NCOA-related proposed advertisements by licensees; (2) however, procedures designed by the Service to ensure that it is alerted when mail is sent to seed record addresses were not working as intended; thus, the Service lacked assurance that the seeding process provided an effective program oversight mechanism; (3) further, even though required to do so by the licensing agreement or by prescribed program procedures, during the 1996 through 1998 period GAO examined, the Service did not always: (a) conduct the minimum number of licensee audits, including on-site audits; (b) promptly reaudit licensees that failed initial audits; or (c) promptly or always suspend or terminate licensees that failed successive audits; (4) also, the Service reported that it had performed more licensee audits than were documented in its audit files; however, even when GAO included these additional audits in its data, GAO determined that the Service did not perform all audits required; (5) the Service has taken no action on GAO's recommendations that it explicitly state, in the acknowledgement form signed by customers of licensees, that NCOA program-linked data are not to be used to create or maintain new-movers lists; and (6) GAO continues to believe that more specific language in the acknowledgement form could help ensure that use of NCOA program-linked data is limited to the purposes for which they were collected.

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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