U.S. Postal Service

Some aspects of the U.S. Postal Service's fiscal year 1999 performance report were not as straightforward and clearly stated as intended by the Government Performance and Results Act of 1993 (GPRA). For example, the Service highlighted results for timely delivery of first-class mail. The service met, but did not exceed its goal for on time overnight delivery and fell a little short of its goal for 2- and 3-day deliveries. Such information had to be gleaned from detailed text in the report. Some aspects of the Service's fiscal year 2001 preliminary performance plan were not as comprehensive as they had been in earlier plans. Several prior years' subgoals were not carried forward into the 2001 preliminary plan; criteria for achieving goals were unclear; strategies to accomplish results were incomplete; information in prior years' plans was not updated; and little or no explanation was given on why the plan lacked baseline data for some quantitative indicators.

GAO noted that: (1) GAO's assessments of USPS' FY 1999 performance report and its FY 2001 preliminary performance plan are not as positive as prior years' assessments of USPS' efforts under the Government Performance and Results Act of 1993 (GPRA); (2) although both the FY 1999 performance report and FY 2001 performance plan contain several positive aspects, GAO did not see the continued progression of improvements in USPS' GPRA-related documents that GAO observed in the past; (3) more specifically, GAO believes that some aspects of USPS' FY 1999 performance report were not as straightforward and clearly stated as intended by GPRA, and some aspects of USPS' FY 2001 preliminary performance plan were not as comprehensive as that had been in prior plans; (4) GAO also has concerns about other aspects that may limit the plan's usefulness; (5) it appears that some aspects of USPS' FY 1999 performance report could be misleading; (6) the report could mislead readers into concluding that USPS' Total Factor Productivity increased during FY 1999 due to the report's portrayal of negative postal productivity as a strongly positive result; (7) there are also a number of reasons why USPS' FY 2001preliminary performance plan may not have been as useful to Congress, postal managers, and others as it could have been; and (8) those reasons include instances where: (a) without detailed explanation, several prior years' subgoals--and their associated indicators and targets--were not carried forward into FY 2001 preliminary performance plan; (b) the criteria USPS used to measure its success toward achieving certain goals were unclear; (c) the descriptions of strategies to accomplish certain results were incomplete; (d) information contained in prior years' plans were carried forward into the current years' plan without always being updated to reflect known or anticipated changes; and (e) little or no explanation was given on why the plan lacked baseline data for some quantitative indicators.

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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