United States Government Accountability Office

GAO Report to Congressional Requesters

U.S. POSTAL 

SERVICE 

Delivery Performance 

Standards, 

Measurement, and 

Reporting Need 

Improvement 

July 2006 

 

GAO-06-733 
What GAO Found

United States Government Accountability Office

Why GAO Did This Study

Highlights

Accountability Integrity Reliability

July 2006

U.S. POSTAL SERVICE

Delivery Performance Standards, 

Measurement, and Reporting Need 

Improvement 

Highlights of GAO-06-733, a report to 

Congressional requesters 

U.S. Postal Service (USPS) delivery

performance standards and results,

which are central to its mission of 

providing universal postal service,

have been a long-standing concern

for mailers and Congress. 

Standards are essential to set 

realistic expectations for delivery 

performance and organize 

activities accordingly. Timely and 

reliable reporting of results is 

essential for management, oversight, and accountability purposes. 

GAO was asked to assess (1) 

USPS’s delivery performance 

standards for timely mail delivery, 

(2) delivery performance 

information that USPS collects and 

reports on timely mail delivery, and 

(3) progress made to improve 

delivery performance information. 

What GAO Recommends

GAO recommends that USPS take

actions to modernize its delivery 

standards, implement delivery

performance measures for major 

types of mail by providing clear 

commitment and more effective 

collaboration, and improve the 

transparency of delivery 

performance standards, measures,

and results. In commenting on a

draft of this report, USPS disagreed 

that its standards are outdated and 

detailed its vision to improve 

service measures and transparency. 

USPS did not directly comment on

three of our four

recommendations. On our 

transparency recommendation, 

USPS said that its standards should

be more visible and is exploring 

providing more of this information. 

USPS has delivery standards for its major types of mail, but some have not 

been updated in a number of years to reflect changes in how mail is 

prepared and delivered. These outdated standards are unsuitable as 

benchmarks for setting realistic expectations for timely mail delivery, 

measuring delivery performance, or improving service, oversight, and 

accountability. USPS plans corrective action to update some standards. 

Also, some delivery standards are not easily accessible, which impedes 

mailers from obtaining information to make informed decisions. 

USPS does not measure and report its delivery performance for most types 

of mail. Therefore, transparency with regard to its overall performance in 

timely mail delivery is limited. As shown in the table below, representative 

measures cover less than one-fifth of mail volume and do not include 

Standard Mail, bulk First-Class Mail, Periodicals, and most Package Services. 

Despite recent disclosures on its Web site, USPS’s reporting is more limited 

than the scope of measurement. Without sufficient transparency, it is 

difficult for USPS and its customers to identify and address delivery 

problems, and for Congress, the Postal Rate Commission, and others to hold 

management accountable for results and conduct independent oversight. 

USPS Delivery Standards, Measurement, and Reporting 

Type of mail 

Delivery 

standards 

Mail volume 

(percent) 

Representative 

measurement 

Reporting on

USPS Web site 

Standard Mail 3-10 days 48 None None 

First-Class Mail: bulk mail 1-3 days 25 None None

First-Class Mail: single-piece 1-3 days 22 Partial Partial

Periodicals 1-7 days 4 None None

Package Services 1-9 days 1 Partial Partial

Priority Mail 1-3 days aPartial Partial

International Mail 2 days to 

6 weeks 

a Partial None

Express Mail 1-2 days aFull Partial

Source: GAO analysis of USPS information. 

a

Less than 0.5 percent. 

Progress to improve delivery performance information has been slow and 

inadequate despite numerous USPS and mailer efforts. Some impediments 

to progress include USPS’s lack of continued management commitment and 

follow through on recommendations made by joint USPS/mailer committees, 

as well as technology limitations, data quality deficiencies, limited mailer 

participation in providing needed performance data, and costs. Although 

USPS has initiatives to improve service and better track mail through its mail 

processing system, USPS has no current plans to implement and report on 

additional representative measures of delivery performance. USPS’s 

leadership and effective collaboration with mailers is critical to 

implementing a complete set of delivery performance measures.

www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-06-733.

To view the full product, including the scope 

and methodology, click on the link above. 

For more information, contact Katherine 

Siggerud at (202) 512-2834 or 

siggerudk@gao.gov. 
Contents 

Letter 1

Results in Brief 3 

Background 7

Some USPS Delivery Standards Are Not Useful and Transparent 

and Do Not Reflect Current Mail Operations 10 

USPS Measurement and Reporting Of Delivery Performance 

Information Is Inadequate 22 

Progress In Developing Complete Delivery Performance 

Measurement Is Unsatisfactory Due To Lack of Management 

Commitment and Effective Collaboration 31 

Conclusions 41

Recommendations for Executive Action 42 

Agency Comments and Our Evaluation 42 

Appendix I Objectives, Scope, and Methodology 51 

Appendix II USPS Delivery Standards 58 

Appendix III Comments from the U.S. Postal Service 64 

Appendix IV GAO Contact and Staff Acknowledgments 119 

Tables 

Table 1: Summary of USPS Delivery Standards for Timely Delivery 

of Mail 11 

Table 2: USPS Measurement and Reporting of Timely Delivery 

Performance 23

Table 3: USPS Delivery Performance Measurement by Type of Mail 25 

Table 4: USPS Delivery Performance Reporting by Type of Mail 28 

Table 5: Timeline of Actions and Recommendations Related to

Delivery Performance Measurement 32 

Table 6: Basis for GAO Assessment of USPS Delivery Standards, 

Measurement, and Reporting 52 

Table 7: USPS Delivery Standards by Class and Type of Mail 58 

Page i GAO-06-733 USPS Delivery Performance Information
Table 8: USPS’s Approximate Overview of the Service Standard 

Ranges for Standard Mail and Periodicals (not specifically 

required) 63

Figure 

Figure 1: Geographic Coverage of Delivery Performance 

Measurement for First-Class Mail Deposited in Collection 

Boxes as Measured by EXFC 24 

Abbreviations 

APQC American Productivity and Quality Center 

BMC Bulk Mail Center 

DBMC Destination Bulk Mail Center 

DDU Destination Delivery Unit 

DSCF Destination Sectional Center Facility 

EMS Express Mail Service 

EXFC External First-Class Measurement System 

GPRA Government Performance and Results Act of 1993

MTAC Mailers’ Technical Advisory Committee 

OCA Office of the Consumer Advocate 

P&DC Processing and Distribution Center 

PETE Priority End-to-End 

POM Postal Operations Manual 

PRC Postal Rate Commission

PSA Parcel Shippers Association 

PTS Product Tracking System 

SCF Sectional Center Facility 

USPS U.S. Postal Service 

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Page ii GAO-06-733 USPS Delivery Performance Information
United States Government Accountability Office

Washington, DC 20548 

July 27, 2006

The Honorable Susan M. Collins 

Chairman 

Committee on Homeland Security 

 and Governmental Affairs 

United States Senate 

The Honorable Tom Carper 

United States Senate 

The U.S. Postal Service’s (USPS) mail delivery standards and performance, 

which are central to its mission of providing postal services to all 

communities, have been long-standing concerns for mailers and customers 

who receive mail. Delivery performance standards (delivery standards) for 

on-time delivery of mail enable USPS, mailers, and customers to set 

realistic expectations for delivery performance, such as the number of 

days mail takes to be delivered, and to organize their activities 

accordingly. USPS and others rely on information about delivery 

performance results to understand whether delivery standards are being 

met and what is driving performance—that is, identifying which factors 

are contributing to both successful and problem areas. This information is 

vital for management, oversight, and accountability purposes. Mailers’ 

concerns revolve around whether standards, measurement, and reporting

are complete, transparent, and useful. These concerns include whether 

USPS’s delivery standards reflect its operations and whether they can be 

used as a benchmark for measuring performance for all major types of 

mail;1

 whether delivery performance measurement is adequate for USPS to 

set goals, manage its operations, and improve its delivery performance; 

and whether the reporting of delivery performance is adequate for various

stakeholders, such as mailers who need this information for business 

planning, as well as USPS’s Board of Governors and the Congress, who 

 1

For the purposes of this report, major types of mail include: Express Mail (also referred to

as Expedited Mail); Priority Mail (i.e., First-Class Mail that weighs over 13 ounces); FirstClass Mail—single-piece mail (e.g., bill payments and letters sent at the rate of 39 cents for 

the first ounce plus 24 cents for each additional ounce) and bulk mail (e.g., bills and 

advertising); Periodicals (mainly magazines and local newspapers); Standard Mail (mainly 

bulk advertising and direct mail solicitations); Package Services (e.g., parcels, 

merchandise, catalogs, media mail, library mail, and books); and International Mail (e.g., 

letters, parcels, and periodicals destinating in foreign countries). 

Page 1 GAO-06-733 USPS Delivery Performance Information
need this information to fulfill their respective oversight and 

accountability responsibilities. Delivery performance information also 

helps the independent Postal Rate Commission (PRC) review proposed 

rates and render advisory opinions on USPS proposals that USPS expects

to affect the quality of postal services nationwide or on a substantially 

nationwide basis. 

There is little statutory guidance on how USPS establishes delivery 

standards. However, USPS is subject to statutory requirements related to 

performance measurement and reporting. Since 1976, Title 39 of the U.S. 

Code has required USPS to submit an annual Comprehensive Statement to 

its congressional oversight and appropriations committees that must 

include “data on the speed and reliability of service provided for the 

various classes of mail and types of mail service,” among other things. In 

addition, the Government Performance and Results Act of 1993 (GPRA) 

requires USPS to annually report to Congress and the public on its goals 

and actual performance relative to these goals. Sponsors of postal reform 

legislation have recognized concerns in the area of delivery standards, 

measurement, and reporting; and the House and Senate have passed postal 

reform legislation that would clarify USPS’s delivery standards and create

a strong postal regulator who would administer statutory obligations for 

USPS to annually report, for most types of mail, the level of service 

provided “in terms of speed of delivery and reliability.”2

 The regulator 

would be required to annually determine compliance with this reporting 

requirement and would have the authority to obtain court orders to 

enforce compliance as well as to impose fines in cases of deliberate 

noncompliance. 

This report assesses 

1. delivery standards for the timely delivery of mail that USPS has 

established,

2. delivery performance information on timely delivery of mail that USPS 

measures and reports, and 

3. progress USPS has made in improving its delivery performance 

information. 

 2

H.R. 22, 109th Congress, was passed by the House on July 26, 2005. The Senate bill was 

introduced as S. 662, 109th Congress and on Feb. 9, 2006, the Senate incorporated S. 662 into

H.R. 22 and passed H.R. 22 in lieu of S. 662. 

Page 2 GAO-06-733 USPS Delivery Performance Information
To address these objectives, we based our assessment on applicable 

laws—such as laws related to USPS’s mission to provide prompt, reliable, 

and effective universal postal service, including the prompt and 

expeditious delivery of mail, and statutory reporting requirements related 

to USPS’s delivery performance. We also developed criteria based on 

practices used by high-performing organizations, including practices for 

performance management identified by the American Productivity and 

Quality Center (APQC), a nonprofit organization that studies the best 

practices of top-performing organizations and benchmarks business 

performance to help organizations improve their quality and productivity. 

In addition, we based our criteria for practices used by high-performing 

organizations on our past work on USPS and other leading organizations.

Our criteria focused on the completeness, transparency, and usefulness of 

the delivery standards, measures, and results for various types of mail. We 

obtained information primarily from USPS documentation, including its 

current delivery standards and other material provided in response to our 

requests, publicly available USPS reports, documents filed in PRC 

proceedings, and other USPS material available on its Web site. We also 

obtained documentation from other sources, such as reports on joint 

USPS-mailer committees, articles, and material provided to us by mailers. 

We interviewed USPS officials responsible for USPS delivery performance 

information and postal stakeholders, including representatives of mailer 

groups, individual mailers, PRC, and PRC’s Office of the Consumer 

Advocate, which is charged with representing the interests of the general 

public. We conducted a data reliability assessment of USPS delivery 

performance information that was sufficient for the purposes of our 

review. More details about our objectives, scope, and methodology are 

included in appendix I. Our work was conducted from August 2005 to July 

2006 in accordance with generally accepted government auditing 

standards. 

While USPS has developed delivery standards for its major types of mail, 

the standards for several types of mail have not been updated in a number 

of years to reflect significant changes in the way that mail is prepared and 

delivered. As a result, these outdated standards are unsuitable as 

benchmarks for setting realistic expectations for timely mail delivery,

measuring delivery performance, or improving service, oversight, and 

accountability. For example, the delivery standards for Standard Mail, 

USPS’s largest volume mail category (48 percent of mail volume), were 

established in the 1970s and are generally based on distance. These 

standards do not take into account mailer activities, such as presorting 

Results in Brief 

Page 3 GAO-06-733 USPS Delivery Performance Information
mail to the ZIP Code or carrier delivery route level, and entering mail at a 

postal facility that generally is closer to the destination, that have led to 

changes in USPS’s mail processing and transportation networks. Such 

activities became much more prevalent after USPS began providing 

discounts to mailers for these activities more than 25 years ago. For 

example, the degree of presorting alters the amount of handling the mail 

receives by USPS and potentially speeds or slows delivery. For similar 

reasons, delivery standards for some Periodicals and most Package

Services mail are outdated and do not reflect changes in the way mailers 

and USPS process this mail. USPS officials told us that because of the 

variety of ways these types of mail are sorted and enter the postal system, 

developing standards to reflect expected speed of delivery is challenging. 

Nevertheless, USPS has received several recommendations over the past 

decade from committees including USPS and mailers representatives to 

update its delivery standards to reflect these trends, but has not 

implemented them. Sponsors of postal reform legislation have recognized

the need for action in this area, and Senate and House reform bills passed 

in this session of Congress would require USPS to, respectively, modernize 

its service standards and report its standards annually. To its credit, USPS

has modernized its standards for some types of mail, such as Parcel Select. 

With regard to First-Class Mail (46 percent of mail volume), USPS has 

occasionally updated its standards to reflect changes in operations and 

performance, but PRC criticized changes that downgraded some of these 

standards. In addition, USPS’s existing delivery standards for some major 

types of mail are not easily accessible, which impedes mailers from

obtaining such information to make informed decisions about different 

mailing options with varying rates and service. 

USPS does not measure and report its delivery performance for most types 

of mail—less than one-fifth of total mail volume is measured—therefore, 

transparency with regard to its overall performance in timely mail delivery 

is limited. No representative measures of delivery performance—measures 

that can be generalized to an entire class or major type of mail—exist for 

Standard Mail (48 percent of volume), bulk First-Class Mail (25 percent of

volume), Periodicals (4 percent of volume), and most Package Services 

(less than 1 percent of volume). Similarly, USPS has only reported its 

delivery performance for a small portion of its mail volume, concentrating

primarily on the single-piece First-Class Mail that is measured. Further, 

single-piece First-Class Mail volume has been declining over the past 15

years and is expected to continue declining. Since 1976, USPS has been 

required to provide “data on the speed and reliability of service provided 

for the various classes of mail and types of mail service” in its annual 

Comprehensive Statement that is submitted to USPS’s oversight and 

Page 4 GAO-06-733 USPS Delivery Performance Information
appropriations committees.3

 However, USPS has focused again only on 

single-piece First-Class Mail in reporting delivery performance in the 

Comprehensive Statement. Such limited measurement also appears to fall 

short of proposed requirements in the House- and Senate-passed bills for 

USPS to report annually on the level of service provided for most types of 

mail “in terms of speed of delivery and reliability.” In April 2006, USPS 

improved its reporting on its Web site by posting delivery performance 

information on a newly created page, including selected results for the 

past quarter for the timely delivery of some Express Mail, Priority Mail, 

First-Class Mail, and Package Services. The information was provided as a 

result of an agreement with PRC’s Office of the Consumer Advocate.4

Nevertheless, USPS’s measurement and reporting gaps are an impediment 

to diagnosing delivery problems and assessing the extent to which USPS is 

meeting its statutory requirements to provide prompt and reliable service 

to patrons in all areas of the United States. 

USPS’s rate of progress in developing a set of delivery performance 

measures for all major types of mail has been slow and inadequate, as has

its progress in reporting its performance for these types of mail. In recent

years, USPS has implemented additional delivery performance measures 

for some low-volume types of mail that collectively comprise less than 1

percent of total mail volume. USPS also tracks some mail for diagnostic 

purposes. However, several impediments continue to hinder USPS’s ability 

to develop representative delivery measures for all of its major types of 

mail against USPS delivery standards, which specify the maximum number 

of days from entry to delivery for mail to be delivered in a timely manner. 

Impediments to measure end-to-end delivery time (i.e., the time from entry 

to delivery) include: 

• The lack of adequate and continued management commitment and 

effective collaboration with the mailing industry to follow through on 

recommendations for improvements and to resolve issues between USPS 

and mailers is an overall theme in understanding the slow progress being 

made in developing and implementing methods of measuring performance. 

 3

39 U.S.C. §2401(e), initially added as 39 U.S.C. §2401(g) by Pub. L. 94-421, Postal 

Reorganization Act Amendments of 1976. 

4

The PRC’s Office of the Consumer Advocate represents the interests of the general public.

The written agreement with USPS is available at 

http://www.prc.gov/docs/46/46232/OCA_Notice_with_Letter.pdf. 

Page 5 GAO-06-733 USPS Delivery Performance Information
• USPS has partially implemented technology that would allow it to track 

barcoded mail through its mail processing and transportation networks. 

Implementation of this technology is a multi-year project and could play a 

part in measuring delivery performance when completed. 

• There has been limited mailer participation in applying unique barcodes to 

mail pieces for tracking purposes. 

• Incomplete and inaccurate data from USPS and mailers about when USPS 

receives bulk mail make it difficult to know when to “start the clock” on

measuring delivery performance for this mail. 

While USPS has taken a number of positive steps to transform its 

operations over the years, it has not implemented several key 

recommendations that have been made since the early 1990s to improve 

its delivery standards and measure delivery performance for all major 

types of mail, particularly for high-volume types of mail, such as Standard 

Mail and bulk First-Class Mail. These recommendations were made in 

1992, 1997, 1999, and 2004 by committees consisting of representatives of 

USPS and the mailing industry. Further, USPS has no current plans to 

implement additional representative measures of delivery performance. 

Senior USPS officials told us that it would be too costly for USPS to 

measure delivery performance by tracking all 210 billion pieces of mail 

every year. However, these concerns about cost could be addressed by 

exploring sampling options or other approaches in collaboration with 

mailers to determine how best to measure delivery performance at much

less cost than attempting to track every mail piece. Such collaboration 

would also allow the parties to determine their information needs, explore 

cost trade-offs associated with various options, and resolve associated 

data quality issues. We recognize that it will take time to resolve 

impediments to implementing additional delivery performance measures. 

However, USPS’s leadership, commitment, and effective collaboration 

with mailers are critical elements to implementing a complete set of 

delivery performance measures that will enable USPS and its customers to 

understand the quality of delivery services, identify opportunities for 

improvement, and track progress in achieving timely delivery. 

We are making recommendations to USPS that include: 

• modernizing delivery standards for all major types of mail to reflect USPS 

operations; 

Page 6 GAO-06-733 USPS Delivery Performance Information
• providing a clear commitment to develop a complete set of representative

delivery performance measures; 

• implementing representative delivery performance measures for all major 

types of mail by providing more effective collaboration with mailers and 

others; and,

• improving the transparency of delivery performance standards, measures, 

and results by publicly disclosing more information, including in its 

Comprehensive Statement and other annual performance reports to 

Congress, as well as providing easily accessible information on its Web 

site. 

In commenting on a draft of this report, USPS disagreed that some of its 

delivery standards are outdated. However, we did not make changes to 

the report because USPS’s outdated standards do not reflect changes in 

how major types mail are prepared and delivered. Further, USPS 

recognized that its delivery performance measurement and reporting are 

not complete and provided detailed information about its ongoing and 

planned efforts to ultimately measure service performance and provide 

transparency for all classes of mail. USPS stated that it intends to lead the 

efforts required to reach this goal by working collaboratively with others 

in the mailing industry. USPS’s letter also emphasized improving service—

an emphasis we agree with—but we continue to have questions about 

whether USPS’s measurement efforts will result in representative delivery 

performance measures for all major types of mail. For most major types 

of mail, USPS’s vision of service performance measurement is generally

limited to tracking mail through its mail processing and transportation 

networks, which is not the same as measuring end-to-end delivery 

performance against USPS delivery standards. USPS did not directly 

comment on three of our four recommendations. On our fourth 

recommendation concerning improving the transparency of delivery 

performance standards, measures, and results, USPS commented that its 

standards should be more visible and stated that it is exploring making 

information related to its standards available through additional channels, 

including its Web site. 

USPS is an independent establishment of the executive branch mandated 

by law to provide postal services to “bind the nation together through the 

personal, educational, literary, and business correspondence of the 

Background 

Page 7 GAO-06-733 USPS Delivery Performance Information
people.”5

 Established by the Postal Reorganization Act of 1970,6 USPS is a 

vital part of the nation’s communications network, delivering more than 

200 billion pieces of mail each year. USPS is required to provide “prompt, 

reliable, and efficient services to patrons in all areas” and “postal services 

to all communities,” including “a maximum degree of effective and regular 

postal services to rural areas, communities, and small towns where post 

offices are not self-sustaining.”7

 In determining all policies for postal 

services, USPS is mandated to “give the highest consideration to the 

requirement for the most expeditious collection, transportation, and 

delivery of important letter mail.”8

 Also, in selecting modes of 

transportation, USPS is mandated to “give highest consideration to the 

prompt and economical delivery of all mail.”9

 More generally, USPS is 

mandated to provide adequate and efficient postal services that meet the 

needs of different categories of mail and mail users.10

USPS has designated improving service as one of its four goals in its 

Strategic Transformation Plan.11 USPS’s strategy to improve service is to 

“provide timely, reliable delivery, and improved customer service across 

all access points.” Specifically, USPS plans to improve the quality of postal

services by continuing to focus on the end-to-end service performance of 

all mail. The quality of mail delivery service has many dimensions, 

including the delivery of mail to the correct address within a time frame 

that meets standards USPS has established for timely delivery. USPS also

plans to ensure that postal products and services meet customer 

expectations and that all customer services and forms of access are 

responsive, consistent, and easy to use. USPS has long recognized the 

importance of customer satisfaction and measures the satisfaction of its 

residential and business customers on a quarterly basis. USPS reports that 

its customer satisfaction measurement, which is conducted by the Gallup 

Organization, provides actionable information to USPS managers by 

 5

39 U.S.C. §101. 

6

The Postal Reorganization Act of 1970 (Pub. L. No. 91-375) reorganized the former U.S. 

Post Office Department into the U.S. Postal Service and created PRC. 

7

39 U.S.C. §101. 

8

39 U.S.C. §101(e). 

9

39 U.S.C. §101(f). 

1039 U.S.C. §403. 

11USPS, Strategic Transformation Plan 2006-2010 (Washington, D.C.: Sept. 2005). 

Page 8 GAO-06-733 USPS Delivery Performance Information
identifying opportunities to improve overall customer satisfaction. In 

addition to gauging overall customer satisfaction, USPS measures 

customer satisfaction related to specific postal functions such as mail 

delivery and retail service. As USPS recognizes, dissatisfied customers can 

seek and find alternatives to using the mail. USPS faces growing 

competition from electronic alternatives to mailed communications and 

payments as well as private delivery companies. In this challenging 

environment, establishing and maintaining consistently high levels of 

delivery service are critical to success. 

Recognizing the importance of the timely delivery of mail, USPS has 

integrated performance targets and results for some types of mail into its 

performance management system. This system is used to establish pay-forperformance incentives for postal management employees. As we have 

reported, high-performing organizations use effective performance 

management systems as a strategic tool to drive change and achieve

desired results. Among the key practices used is aligning individual 

performance expectations with organizational goals12 by seeking to create

pay, incentive, and reward systems that clearly link employee knowledge, 

skills, and contributions to organizational results. Further, highperforming organizations often must fundamentally change their cultures 

so that they are more results oriented, customer focused, and 

collaborative in nature. As we have reported, the benefit of collecting 

performance information is only fully realized when this information is 

actually used by managers to make decisions oriented toward improving 

results. Performance information can be used to identify problems and 

take corrective action; develop strategy and allocate resources; recognize 

and reward performance; and identify and share effective approaches. 

Practices that can contribute to greater use of performance information 

include demonstrating management commitment; aligning agencywide 

goals, objectives, and measures; improving the usefulness of performance 

information; developing capacity to use performance information; and 

communicating performance information clearly and effectively.13

 12GAO, Results-Oriented Cultures: Creating a Clear Linkage between Individual

Performance and Organizational Success, GAO-03-488 (Washington, D.C.: Mar. 14, 2003).

13GAO, Managing for Results: Enhancing Agency Use of Performance Information for 

Decision-Making, GAO-05-927 (Washington, D.C.: Sept. 9, 2005). 

Page 9 GAO-06-733 USPS Delivery Performance Information
Some USPS standards for timely mail delivery are inadequate because of 

limited usefulness and transparency. In general, these standards have not

kept up with changes in the way that USPS and mailers prepare and 

process mail for delivery. Outdated standards are unsuitable as

benchmarks for setting realistic expectations for timely mail delivery,

measuring delivery performance, or improving service, oversight, and 

accountability. 

According to USPS, service standards represent the level of service that 

USPS strives to provide to customers. These standards are considered to 

be one of the primary operational goals, or benchmarks against which 

service performance is to be compared in measurement systems. USPS 

has established standards for the timely delivery of each type of mail; 

these specify the maximum number of days for “on-time” delivery based 

on the time of day, the location at which USPS receives the mail, and the 

mail’s final destination. For example, USPS standards for 1-day delivery 

require the mail to be received by a specified cutoff time on the day that 

the mail is accepted, which varies depending on geographic location and 

where the mail is deposited (e.g., in a collection box, at a post office, or at

a mail processing facility). In most cases, 1-day mail deposited before the 

cutoff time is considered to be delivered on time if it is delivered on the 

next delivery day, which generally excludes Sundays and holidays. USPS 

delivery standards vary according to the priority of delivery. Express Mail 

has the highest priority, followed by Priority Mail, other First-Class Mail, 

Periodicals, Package Services (e.g., packages sent via Parcel Post), and 

Standard Mail. 

Postal officials, including the Postmaster General, told us that differences

in postage rates for different types of mail reflect differences in delivery

standards and priority. The Postmaster General noted that variability in 

the delivery standards and timing of delivery is built into USPS’s pricing 

structure. He noted that lower-priced mail with lower delivery priority 

receives more variable delivery; this includes mail such as Standard Mail 

which receives discounts for presorting by ZIP Code and destination entry 

that is generally closer to where the mail is delivered. For example, USPS 

can defer the handling of Standard Mail as it moves through its mail 

processing, transportation, and delivery networks. Thus, some pieces of a

large mailing of Standard Mail may be delivered faster than others. The 

Postmaster General explained that this variability of delivery is consistent 

with the relatively low rates afforded to mailers of Standard Mail, who pay 

lower rates than mailers of First-Class Mail. 

Some USPS Delivery 

Standards Are Not 

Useful and 

Transparent and Do 

Not Reflect Current 

Mail Operations 

Page 10 GAO-06-733 USPS Delivery Performance Information
In addition, standards for types of mail within each class can vary. For 

example, Parcel Select, a type of Package Service, has a faster delivery

standard than other Package Services because it is made up of bulk 

shipments of packages entered into USPS’s system close to the final 

destination. Delivery standards for each class and type of mail are 

summarized in table 1 and described in greater detail in appendix II. 

Table 1: Summary of USPS Delivery Standards for Timely Delivery of Mail 

Type of mail 

Mail 

volume 

(percent) Standardsa

 Highlights of standards and related policies and plans 

Standard Mail 47.7 3 to 10 days These standards have not been systemically changed since their inception in 

the 1970s and are loosely based on distance. The standards are generally 

based on the number of postal zones the mail must traverse from where it is 

accepted to its destination. 

Package 

Services 

0.6 1 to 9 daysb

The concept for most of these standards has remained constant since the 

1970s. These standards are loosely based on distance (i.e., on the number of 

postal zones the mail must traverse) and on USPS’s Bulk Mail Center (BMC) 

network. 

Periodicals 3.2 1 to 7 days The concept for these standards, which are loosely based on distance (i.e., on 

the number of postal zones the mail must traverse), has not changed since the 

1980s. 

Priority Mail 0.4 1 to 3 days These standards have existed since the inception of Priority Mail when it 

essentially replaced Air Mail in the late 1970s. Most standards call for 1-day or 

2-day delivery. 

First-Class Mailc46.3 1 to 3 days Most First-Class Mail is to be delivered in 1 day when it is sent within the local 

area served by the destinating mail processing center; 2 days when it is sent 

within the “reasonable reach” of surface transportation, which is often within a 

12-hour drive time; and 3 days for other mail, such as mail transported over

long distances by air. 

Express Mail 0.03 1 to 2 days These standards are supported by a money-back guarantee. A 1-day standard 

generally applies, with the rest to be delivered on the second calendar day or 

the second delivery day. 

International Mail 0.4 2 days to 6 

weeks 

Standards range from 2 to 3 days for Global Express Guaranteed—which has 

date-guaranteed shipping—to 4 to 6 weeks for Global Economy Mail. 

Source: USPS. 

Note: Mail volume data are for fiscal year 2005. 

a

The range of days shown in this table summarizes USPS delivery standards for each class and type 

of mail, which vary depending on the ZIP Codes where each mail piece enters the postal system and

is delivered. 

b

Standards range from 2 to 9 days for Package Services mail within the continental United States, 

except for Alaska and Hawaii, for which no Package Service standards exist, and except for Parcel 

Select, for which standards range from 1 to 3 days.

c

For purposes of this figure, First-Class Mail does not include Priority Mail. 

Page 11 GAO-06-733 USPS Delivery Performance Information
Some USPS delivery standards lack usefulness—notably, the delivery 

standards for Standard Mail, Periodicals, and most Package Services 

mail—because they have not been systematically updated in many years 

and do not reflect USPS’s operations or intended service. These standards 

are loosely based on distance and have tended to remain static despite 

changes in USPS networks, operations, and operational priorities. 

The delivery standards for Standard Mail are outdated. Although delivery 

standards are supposed to represent the level of delivery service USPS 

strives to provide to customers, differences between delivery standards 

and operational policies and practices for delivery service are evident for 

Standard Mail. For example, USPS operational policies state that Standard

Mail entered at the delivery unit, where carriers pick up mail for final 

delivery, should be delivered in 2 days, whereas the standards call for such

delivery in 3 days. Also, depending on mail preparation, such as presorting 

and destination entry, mail can be delivered faster than the standard. 

These differences can impede clear communication to mailers concerned 

with setting realistic expectations for when Standard Mail will be 

delivered and determining how to maximize the value of their mail. 

Correctly anticipating when advertising mail will be delivered is important 

to business planning and profitability. For example: 

Some USPS Delivery 

Standards Have Limited 

Usefulness 

Delivery Standards for 

Standard Mail 

• Local retailers, ranging from department stores to restaurants, need 

realistic expectations as to when advertising mail will be delivered in 

order to effectively promote sales and plan for the appropriate level of 

staffing and inventory. To maximize customer response, retailers send 

advertising mail so that it will be received shortly before a sale—soon 

enough for potential customers to plan to shop during the sale, but not so 

early that they will forget about the sale. Also, if the advertising is 

delivered far in advance of a weekly sale, it can generate demand that is 

difficult to meet with available resources. 

• Catalog companies also need realistic expectations about when catalogs 

will be delivered in order to plan for call center staffing and inventory. 

Thus, reliable and predictable delivery of advertising mail helps businesses 

efficiently schedule staff and inventory to respond to fluctuations in 

demand. Anticipating the level of inventory has become more important 

over time with the trend toward just-in-time inventory that helps minimize 

storage and financing costs. However, the delivery standards for Standard 

Mail are not adequate for advertisers to set realistic expectations for mail 

delivery, in part because these standards do not reflect some operational 

Page 12 GAO-06-733 USPS Delivery Performance Information
policies and practices that can lead to mail being delivered faster or 

slower than the standards call for. 

Substantial changes have occurred in how mailers prepare Standard Mail 

and how USPS processes it, but these changes are not reflected in the 

standards. Today, most Standard Mail is presorted and entered into the 

postal system close to its destination. The degree of presorting and 

destination entry alters the amount of handling it receives by USPS and 

potentially speeds or slows delivery. For example: 

• Presorting: Beginning in 1979, USPS provided discounts to mailers who 

reduce USPS’s processing costs by presorting their Standard Mail to the 

level of carrier delivery routes—discounts extended in 1981 to Standard 

Mail presorted to the level of individual ZIP Codes. In fiscal year 2005,

most Standard Mail was presorted by carrier routes (35 percent) or by 

individual ZIP Codes or ZIP Codes starting with the first three digits (57 

percent). Mail that is presorted by carrier route can move through USPS’s 

system faster than mail that is presorted by groups of ZIP Codes because it

does not need as much handling by USPS. However, the delivery standards 

for Standard Mail do not take presorting into account. 

• Destination entry: Starting in 1991, USPS gave destination entry discounts 

for mailers that deliver their Standard Mail to a postal facility that 

generally is closer to the mail’s destination, such as the delivery unit 

facility where carriers pick up their mail or the local mail processing 

center that forwards mail to these facilities. Mail that is entered at a 

destination facility is delivered faster than other Standard Mail because it

avoids some USPS handling and USPS assigns a low priority to handling 

Standard Mail. However, the impact of destination entry is not reflected in

the delivery standards. For example, the delivery standards continue to 

call for delivering all Standard Mail in 3 days or more, whereas the Postal

Operations Manual states that Standard Mail that mailers enter at delivery 

units should be delivered in 2 days.

USPS also works with mailers to deliver their Standard Mail within a range 

of dates that they request. Advertising mailers can request that their 

advertising be delivered within this range—known as the “in home” dates. 

As mentioned earlier, predictable delivery helps advertisers to plan their 

resources and inventory. Requesting “in home” dates may result in delivery 

that is faster or slower than the standard. The Postal Operations Manual

states that in such cases, delivery units should attempt to meet the “in 

home” dates rather than the delivery standards. According to USPS, its 

delivery standards are supposed to be the benchmark against which 

delivery performance is compared and reflects the level of service that 

Page 13 GAO-06-733 USPS Delivery Performance Information
USPS strives to provide. In this case, however, the delivery standards for 

Standard Mail would not be a suitable benchmark for measuring delivery 

performance, because they do not reflect USPS operations. 

USPS provided mailers with guidelines in 2000 that recognized that 

Standard Mail can be delivered faster than the standard, depending on its 

level of presorting, and on whether the mailers deliver it closer to its 

destination. The guidelines presented a table for the speed of Standard 

Mail delivery depending on how the mail was presorted and where it 

entered the mail processing network. However, USPS did not consider 

these guidelines to be part of its delivery standards for Standard Mail, and 

according to USPS, these guidelines are now obsolete. Nevertheless, USPS 

officials told us that USPS continues to maintain internal guidelines for the 

desired delivery speed for Standard Mail, depending on its level of 

presorting and where it enters the postal network. 

In 1992, 1997, and 1999, various committees composed of USPS officials 

and mailers recommended that delivery standards be improved for 

Standard Mail and other types of mail. In 1999, a working group of USPS 

officials and mailers recommended that the delivery standards for 

Standard Mail be updated to reflect how it is presorted and where the mail 

enters the postal system. USPS did not implement these 1999 

recommendations and offered no explanation on why it did not. Then, 

when we met with Postmaster General in June 2006, he told us that it 

would be difficult for USPS to update its standards to reflect the wide 

variety of differences in mail preparation and processing, and that it might

have an impact on the rates for some types of mail, to which he believes 

the mailers would object. In contrast, the Association for Postal 

Commerce (PostCom), a major mailer group, wrote the following to us in 

March 2006: “It is PostCom’s belief that the development and publication 

of service standards based on existing USPS operations and networks is a 

critical first step toward the development of any service performance 

measurement system. There is no barrier to moving forward with defining 

service standards for all classes of mail.” PostCom noted it actively 

supported the efforts of the 1999 working group, and said its 

recommendations—which included calling for standards based on existing 

mail processing and transportation environments, which for bulk mail 

would also reflect mail preparation and entry point—“largely still apply.” 

Because outdated delivery standards are an impediment to measuring and 

improving delivery performance, updating these standards could help 

increase the value of Standard Mail to businesses that mail advertising. As 

previously noted, understanding when Standard Mail will be delivered 

Page 14 GAO-06-733 USPS Delivery Performance Information
helps mailers send this mail so it will be delivered at what they consider to 

be the optimum time and helps them to plan for staff and inventory. In 

addition, updating the delivery standards for Standard Mail would provide 

an appropriate benchmark for measuring Standard Mail delivery 

performance. 

For some of the same reasons as Standard Mail, delivery standards are 

likewise outdated for most Package Services mail. Delivery standards for 

most Package Services also date to the 1970s and are generally distancebased. These standards are predicated on USPS’s national network of Bulk 

Mail Centers (BMCs) that accept and handle packages. USPS told us that 

the delivery standards for Package Services “are changed infrequently

since the BMC network has not been appreciably altered since its 

inception in the 1970s.” Since the 1970s, USPS has implemented many 

changes regarding the handling of packages, including discounts for 

presorting Package Services items to the carrier route or ZIP Code, as well 

as discounts for destination entry. However, these changes have not been 

reflected in changes to the Package Services standards. 

A noteworthy exception involves useful delivery standards that USPS 

created for a specific type of Package Services mail called Parcel Select, 

when it was introduced in 1999. These standards were updated in 2002. 

USPS’s standards for Parcel Select differentiate speed of delivery by point

of entry, e.g., 1 day for entry at the destination delivery facility or 2 days 

for entry at the mail processing center that forwards the parcels to the 

delivery facility. These standards were intended to provide an appropriate

benchmark for delivery performance measurement in order to facilitate 

efforts to improve the delivery performance for this mail. USPS 

subsequently collaborated with officials of the Parcel Shippers Association 

(PSA) to implement delivery performance measurement for Parcel Select

against these standards, and the results are factored into individual payfor-performance incentives for many USPS managers. 

Both USPS and PSA officials told us that incorporating delivery 

performance results into these incentives—which was possible due to 

useful performance standards and measures—was a primary reason why 

on-time delivery performance has improved for Parcel Select. They said

that as a result of improved delivery performance, Parcel Select has been

able to maintain its viability as a low-cost alternative for lightweight 

packages within the competitive packages market. In this regard, we have

Delivery Standards for Package 

Services 

Page 15 GAO-06-733 USPS Delivery Performance Information
also reported that both establishing and maintaining consistently high 

levels of delivery service are critical to USPS’s success in an increasingly 

competitive marketplace.

14 Further, we have noted that USPS had lost 

Parcel Post business to private carriers, who had come to dominate the 

profitable business-to-business segment of the market because they 

offered cheaper and faster service. 

Parcel Select provides destination entry discounts for bulk mailings of 

Parcel Post. Most of Parcel Select’s volume is tendered to USPS by a 

handful of third-party consolidators who receive packages from multiple 

companies and consolidate their volume to enable cost-effective 

destination entry. By entering parcels closer to their destination, the 

consolidators speed delivery and narrow the delivery window. However, 

prior to measuring and improving the delivery performance of Parcel 

Select, mailers considered Parcel Select to be a low-cost service with a 

reputation for low quality delivery. The delivery performance data has 

been used to identify delivery problems in a timely manner, such as 

problems in timely delivery of Parcel Select in specific geographic areas, 

so that corrective action could be taken to maintain and improve delivery 

performance. USPS actions to improve the performance of Parcel Select 

are consistent with practices we have reported are used by highperforming organizations: using performance information and 

performance management systems to become more results oriented, 

customer focused, and collaborative in nature; identify problems and take 

corrective action; and improve effectiveness and achieve desired results.15

As with Standard Mail and most Package Services, delivery standards are 

outdated for Periodicals that are delivered outside the local area from 

which they are mailed. The distance-based concept for Periodicals 

standards has remained the same since the 1980s and does not reflect 

mailers presorting mail by carrier route or ZIP Code or destination entry of

mail at destination facilities. Like Standard Mail, USPS told us that the 

Periodicals delivery standards are meant to represent the maximum 

service standard targets for mail that is not presorted. However, the 

impact of presorting has not been incorporated into the Periodicals 

delivery standards. 

Delivery Standards for 

Periodicals 

 14GAO, U.S. Postal Service: New Focus on Improving Service Quality and Customer

Satisfaction, GAO/GGD-96-30 (Washington, D.C.: Dec. 20, 1995). 

15GAO-05-927, GAO-03-488.

Page 16 GAO-06-733 USPS Delivery Performance Information
In contrast, to USPS’s credit, it has updated its 1-day delivery standards for 

Periodicals delivered within the local area where they are mailed. Further,

it generally updates the standards at the same time for Periodicals and 

First-Class Mail that originate and destinate in the same local area so that 

the scope of 1-day delivery remains the same for both types of mail. 

Looking forward, USPS plans to change the way its mail processing and 

transportation networks handle Periodicals mail this summer, which USPS 

officials said will lead to changes in some Periodicals delivery standards 

so that they reflect current operations. They said that Periodicals that are

moved via ground transportation, which make up a majority of all 

Periodicals volume, will be combined with First-Class Mail. As a result, 

these Periodicals should receive comparable handling and faster delivery 

times than is currently the case. According to Periodicals mailers, 

inconsistent delivery performance that does not meet customer 

expectations causes renewal rates to decline and leads to customer 

service calls that are costly to handle. According to USPS officials, 

implementation of these planned changes to postal operations and 

standards can be expected to result in updating many of the specific 

standards for Periodicals mailed between specific pairs of ZIP Codes. 

Some of the specific delivery standards for Priority Mail may also need to 

be updated because they do not reflect USPS’s operations. According to 

the Deputy Postmaster General, some Priority Mail delivery standards call 

for on-time delivery of Priority Mail in 2 days, but it is often physically 

impossible for USPS to meet these standards when that requires moving 

the mail across the country. As we reported in 1993, officials of the Postal

Inspection Service questioned whether Priority Mail could be delivered 

everywhere within the continental United States within 2 days, which was 

then the delivery standard.

16 USPS has since established 3-day delivery 

standards for some Priority Mail, but these standards cover less than 5 

percent of Priority Mail volume. USPS officials told us that USPS may 

make changes to some of the specific Priority Mail standards for mail sent 

between specific pairs of ZIP Codes so that the standards reflect USPS 

operations. 

USPS has updated its standards for First-Class Mail over the years with the 

intent of reflecting its operations. However, questions have been raised in 

Delivery Standards for Priority 

Mail 

Delivery Standards for FirstClass Mail 

 16GAO, Priority Mail: Advertised 2-Day Service Is Not Guaranteed, GAO/GGD-93-122 

(Washington, D.C.: July 16, 1993). 

Page 17 GAO-06-733 USPS Delivery Performance Information
PRC proceedings and advisory opinions about some of the changes.17 By 

way of background, when USPS decides on a change in the nature of 

postal services that will generally affect service on a nationwide or 

substantially nationwide basis, USPS is required by law to submit a 

proposal, within a reasonable time frame prior to its effective date, to PRC

requesting an advisory opinion on the change. In 1989, USPS submitted a 

proposal to PRC for an advisory opinion that involved a national 

realignment of the delivery standards for First-Class Mail. This realignment

involved downgrading the delivery standards for an estimated 10 to 25 

percent of First-Class Mail volume, so that these standards would reflect 

actual operations or planned changes to operations. In general, these 

delivery standards were proposed to be downgraded by reducing the size 

of 1-day delivery areas, thereby downgrading some mail to 2-day service,

and likewise reducing the scope of 2-day delivery, thereby downgrading 

some mail to 3-day service. USPS also stated that it would make changes 

to its operations, including moving some First-Class Mail by truck instead

of by air, and that it expected to provide more reliable service as a result.

PRC advised against adoption of USPS’s proposed national realignment, 

explaining that its review suggested the realignment may be an excessive 

reaction to what may be localized problems on a limited scale. PRC 

questioned if the proposed realignment could bring about significant 

improvement in delivery service commensurate with its effect on mail 

users. However, PRC agreed that existing delivery standards could not be 

met in certain areas, such as the New York City metropolitan area, and on 

that basis, said that some specific localized changes to the service 

standards to correct anomalies and major problem areas would be a 

sensible path for USPS to pursue. USPS proceeded to implement a 

national realignment to its First-Class Mail standards from 1990 to 1992. 

In 2000 and 2001, USPS again changed many of its First-Class Mail 

standards in a manner that USPS said would have a nationwide impact on 

service, including downgrading some standards from 2 days to 3 days in 

the western United States and upgrading other standards. USPS reported 

that these changes were intended to provide consistent and timely delivery 

service for 2-day and 3-day mail. USPS also reported that the changes 

reflected a general trend toward making 2-day zones more contiguous, 

more consistent with the “reasonable reach” of surface transportation 

 17Although Priority Mail is classified as a subclass of First-Class Mail, for purposes of this

report, “First-Class Mail” refers to First-Class Mail that does not include Priority Mail. 

Page 18 GAO-06-733 USPS Delivery Performance Information
from each originating mail processing facility, and potentially less 

dependent on air transportation—which had lacked reliability. USPS did 

not seek a PRC opinion on these changes in the year before 

implementation. 

After a lengthy proceeding regarding the 2000 and 2001 changes, PRC 

issued an advisory report earlier this year that suggested that USPS 

reconsider its First-Class Mail standards, stating that the service resulting 

from the realignment cannot be said to be sufficient to meet the needs of 

postal patrons in all areas as required by law and that USPS did not 

consistently adhere to the statutory requirement to give highest 

consideration to expeditious transportation of important letter mail.18 PRC 

urged USPS to give more effective public notice about First-Class Mail 

delivery standards, such as through Web-site postings and collection box 

labels. More generally, PRC also urged USPS to actively engage the public

in major policy decisions and fully inform the public about matters of 

direct interest that affect USPS operations. PRC said that USPS, as a 

government monopoly, has a positive obligation to learn the needs and 

desires of its customers and to structure its products to meet them where 

doing so is not inconsistent with reasonably feasible and efficient 

operations. 

In February 2006, USPS sought a PRC advisory opinion, which is pending,

in connection with USPS’s realignment of its mail processing and 

transportation networks.19 USPS is currently planning and implementing a 

nationwide realignment of its mail processing and transportation 

networks. According to USPS, its long-term operational needs will be met 

best if its mail processing network evolves into one in which excess 

capacity is reduced and redundant operations and transportation are 

eliminated. USPS stated that it is not proposing to change the longstanding delivery standard ranges for any particular mail class; however, 

any changes to delivery standards that affect the expected delivery times 

from origin to destination between particular 3-digit ZIP Code pairs will be 

made incrementally as USPS implements changes to its networks.20 USPS 

also stated that the overall magnitude and scope of potential service 

 18PRC, Commission Report: Complaint on First-Class Mail Standards Service, Docket

No. C2001-3 (Washington, D.C.: Apr. 17, 2006). 

19PRC Docket No. N2006-1, Evolutionary Network Development Service Changes, 2006. 

20A 3-digit ZIP Code area includes all addresses with the same first three digits of the ZIP

Code. 

Page 19 GAO-06-733 USPS Delivery Performance Information
standard upgrades and downgrades for any particular mail class cannot be 

known until numerous feasibility reviews have been conducted and 

operational changes implemented over the next several years. However, 

USPS stated that it expected that changes to its delivery standards are 

likely to be most pronounced for First-Class Mail and Priority Mail. 

USPS has also made changes to its delivery standards for Express Mail to 

reflect changes in operations. Similar to the delivery standards for FirstClass Mail, those for Express Mail were discussed in a PRC proceeding 

after USPS implemented changes to them. In April 2001, USPS reduced the

scope of the overnight delivery network for Express Mail sent on 

Saturdays and the eve of holidays. According to USPS, it had contracted 

with FedEx to provide more reliable air transportation for Express Mail; 

but, because FedEx provided no service on Saturday or Sunday nights and 

some federal holidays, USPS changed its delivery plans for mail pieces 

accepted on Saturdays and the eve of holidays. Earlier this year, PRC 

issued an advisory report that found the changes to the Express Mail 

network had affected service on a substantially nationwide basis in 2001. 

PRC criticized the lack of public notice before the changes were made, but 

unlike its advisory opinions on changes to First-Class Mail standards, did

not criticize the changes that USPS made to its Express Mail standards.21

Over the past year, the House and Senate have passed postal reform 

legislation that would clarify USPS’s delivery standards. The House-passed 

legislation would require USPS to annually report its delivery standards 

for most types of mail and the level of delivery service provided in terms of 

speed and reliability. The Senate-passed legislation included more detailed 

requirements regarding delivery service standards.22 This bill would require 

USPS to establish “modern service standards” within 1 year after the bill is

enacted. These standards would have four statutory objectives: (1) to 

enhance the value of postal services to both senders and recipients; (2) to 

preserve regular and effective access to postal services in all communities,

including those in rural areas or where post offices are not self-sustaining; 

(3) to reasonably assure USPS customers of the reliability, speed, and 

frequency of mail delivery that is consistent with reasonable rates and best

business practices; and (4) to provide a system of objective external 

Delivery Standards for Express 

Mail 

Proposed Postal Reform 

Legislation and Delivery 

Standards 

 21PRC, Order on Complaint on Express Mail, Docket No. C2005-1 (Washington, D.C.: Apr.

18, 2006).

22The reporting requirements in the House and Senate postal reform bills do not cover 

types of mail classified as “competitive” such as Express Mail and Priority Mail.

Page 20 GAO-06-733 USPS Delivery Performance Information
performance measurements for each market-dominant product (e.g., mail 

covered by the postal monopoly) as a basis for measuring USPS’s 

performance. In addition, USPS would be required to take into account

eight statutory factors in establishing or revising its standards: (1) the 

actual level of service that USPS customers receive under any service 

guidelines previously established by USPS or service standards 

established under the new statutory system; (2) the degree of customer 

satisfaction with USPS’s performance in the acceptance, processing, and 

delivery of mail; (3) the needs of USPS customers, including those with 

physical impairments; (4) mail volume and revenues projected for future 

years; (5) the projected growth in the number of addresses USPS will be 

required to serve in future years; (6) the current and projected future costs 

of serving USPS customers; (7) the effect of changes in technology, 

demographics, and population distribution on the efficient and reliable 

operation of the postal delivery system; and (8) the policies of Title 39 (i.e., 

the postal laws) and such other factors as USPS determines appropriate.

Like the House-passed bill, the Senate-passed bill would require USPS to 

annually report on the speed and reliability of delivery of most types of 

mail. 

In explaining the rationale for these requirements regarding delivery 

standards and service, sponsors of the Senate bill stated that the new 

standards would improve service, be used by USPS to establish 

performance goals, and continue to ensure daily delivery to every address,

thereby preserving universal service. A Senate committee report on an 

earlier version of these requirements stated that they were intended to 

ensure that the service USPS provides is consistent with the statutory 

definition of universal service, as well as preserving and enhancing the 

value of postal products. In this regard, the report expressed concern that 

USPS may be tempted to erode service quality in an effort to cut costs, and 

stated that the reporting requirements would provide information to 

enable the postal regulator and all interested parties to evaluate the 

provision of service, with the service standards serving as a benchmark for 

measuring USPS’s performance.23

 23S. Rept. 108-318, to accompany S. 2468, at 22-23 (2004). 

Page 21 GAO-06-733 USPS Delivery Performance Information
Although USPS has recently provided information related to its delivery 

standards in ongoing PRC proceedings, USPS has not made all of this 

information easily accessible to all business mailers and the public. As a 

result, some customers are hindered from making informed decisions 

about different mailing options with varying rates and service, as well as 

from assessing USPS’s delivery performance. Although USPS does have a 

CD-ROM with information about its delivery standards that is freely 

available to those who are aware of its existence, information about how 

to order the CD-ROM is not easily accessible on its Web site. The CD-ROM 

contains delivery standards for some types of mail, such as Standard Mail 

and Periodicals, which are not available on its Web site. Looking forward, 

USPS has the opportunity to further expand the accessibility of 

information on its delivery standards, much as USPS has done to improve 

the transparency of its financial information in recent years. For example, 

in an ongoing PRC proceeding, USPS provided new narrative summaries 

that explain its detailed standards; these summaries are posted on the PRC 

Web site, but not on the USPS Web site. 

USPS’s delivery performance measurement and reporting is inadequate—

in part because its delivery performance information is incomplete, since 

representative measures of delivery performance do not cover most mail, 

and in part because its reporting of this delivery performance information 

is deficient (see table 2). USPS tracks some mail pieces for diagnostic 

purposes, and plans to have more data available as it deploys automated 

equipment to sort flat-sized mail into the order it is delivered. However, a 

number of impediments have limited USPS’s ability to track mail. The 

diagnostic data is not representative and does not amount to delivery 

performance measurement. Although USPS recently added a section on 

domestic delivery performance to its Web site, it does not provide 

complete performance information for some types of mail. Without 

complete information, USPS and mailers are unable to diagnose delivery

problems so that corrective action can be implemented. In addition, 

stakeholders cannot understand how well USPS is fulfilling its basic 

mission, nor can they understand delivery performance results and trends. 

Deficiencies in measurement and reporting also impair oversight and 

accountability by PRC and Congress. 

USPS Delivery Standards 

Lack Adequate 

Transparency 

USPS Measurement 

and Reporting Of 

Delivery Performance 

Information Is 

Inadequate 

Page 22 GAO-06-733 USPS Delivery Performance Information
Table 2: USPS Measurement and Reporting of Timely Delivery Performance 

Type of mail 

Mail volume

(percent)

Mail 

revenue

(percent) 

Representative

measurement 

Reporting on

USPS Web 

site 

Standard Mail 47.7 28.4 NoneaNone

First-Class Mail: bulk 24.6 23.7 NoneaNone

First-Class Mail: singlepiece 21.7 30.4 Partial Partial

Periodicals 4.3 3.2 NoneaNone

Package Services 0.6 3.3 Partial Partial 

Priority Mail 0.4 7.0 Partial Partial 

International Mail 0.4 2.6 Partial None 

Express Mail 0.03 1.3 Full Partial 

Source: GAO analysis of USPS information. 

a

No representative measure of delivery performance exists for this mail. Some mailers pay an 

additional fee to obtain data on the progress of their mail through USPS’s mail processing system. 

However, these data are not representative, cover less than 2 percent of total mail volume, and do 

not include data on the date of delivery. 

Note: Timely delivery performance is measured based on comparing the time for USPS to deliver 

mail against USPS’s delivery standards. Reporting includes material on USPS’s Web site. For 

purposes of this table, First-Class Mail does not include Priority Mail. Volume and revenue data are 

for fiscal year 2005 and do not add up to 100 percent because they do not include some small and 

unrelated types of mail. 

USPS has not established a complete set of quantitative measures for 

delivery performance, largely because its delivery performance 

measurement covers less than one-fifth of its total mail volume—that is, 

only Express Mail and parts of First-Class Mail, Priority Mail, Package 

Services, and International Mail. USPS does not measure delivery 

performance for the remaining volume, which includes Standard Mail, 

bulk First-Class Mail, Periodicals, and most Package Services. In addition, 

the External First-Class Measurement System (EXFC) is limited to singlepiece First-Class Mail deposited in collection boxes in selected areas of 

the country (see fig. 1). Thus, as USPS has reported, EXFC is not a 

systemwide measurement of all First-Class Mail performance. USPS has 

stated that it has strong business and operational reasons for using this 

EXFC methodology and that the areas selected for testing ensure coverage 

of its highest-volume areas. These reasons include EXFC covering areas 

from which most First-Class Mail originates and destinates, the ability of 

EXFC to provide results for specific geographic areas, and practical 

advantages for collecting data from fewer areas of the nation. 

USPS Delivery 

Performance Measurement 

Is Not Complete 

Page 23 GAO-06-733 USPS Delivery Performance Information
Figure 1: Geographic Coverage of Delivery Performance Measurement for First-Class Mail Deposited in Collection Boxes as 

Measured by EXFC 

Source: USPS.

Note: Areas covered by EXFC are shaded. Boundaries within states are for 3-digit ZIP Code areas. 

Similarly, delivery performance data for Priority Mail are limited because 

they only cover Priority Mail volume entered at post offices and other 

retail facilities, and for which mailers purchase Delivery Confirmation 

Service.24 Such mail constitutes only 4 percent of all Priority Mail volume. 

According to USPS officials, USPS expects the volume of this Priority Mail 

 24Delivery Confirmation service provides mailers with the date and time of delivery or

attempted delivery. 

Page 24 GAO-06-733 USPS Delivery Performance Information
to increase, which would increase the scope of delivery performance 

measurement. They said that this measure, which replaced the former 

Priority End-to-End (PETE) measurement system at the beginning of fiscal 

year 2006, covers all types of Priority Mail, including letters, flat-sized mail, 

and parcels. However, USPS officials also told us that USPS cannot 

currently measure the delivery performance for bulk quantities of Priority 

Mail with Delivery Confirmation, such as business mailings of 

merchandise, because USPS does not have accurate data on when the mail 

entered into its system. 

On the positive side, USPS has implemented delivery performance 

measurement for Parcel Select and some types of International Mail, both

of which operate in a highly competitive marketplace. It has used this 

measurement to establish targets and identify opportunities to improve 

service. Although these products are a small fraction of mail volume, USPS 

has developed delivery performance measures to address customer needs 

for timely delivery. Highlights for measurement of major types of mail are 

listed in table 3. 

Table 3: USPS Delivery Performance Measurement by Type of Mail 

Type of mail How USPS measures timely delivery performance 

Standard Mail USPS does not measure delivery performance. This is the largest single class of mail, representing nearly

half of total mail volume. 

First-Class Mail The External First-Class Measurement System (EXFC), administered by a contractor, measures when test 

mail pieces are deposited in collection boxes and received at various addresses. EXFC covers 463 3-digit 

ZIP Code areas judgmentally selected based on geographic and volume density. It does not cover bulk mail 

that comprises more than half of First-Class Mail volume. 

Periodicals USPS does not measure delivery performance. This mail volume and revenue is declining but is important to 

USPS’s business and universal postal service. 

Package Services USPS does not measure the timely delivery of most Package Services. An exception is Parcel Select, which 

is tracked by scanning unique barcodes. 

Priority Mail USPS tracks Priority Mail volume when mailers use Delivery Confirmation Service, which enables USPS to 

scan unique Delivery Confirmation barcodes. Such mail, when entered at postal retail locations, constitutes 4 

percent of all Priority Mail volume. 

International Mail International Express Mail is tracked through the scanning of barcodes. Some letter mail is measured by a 

system similar to EXFC that also uses technology to track the movement of mail. 

Express Mail USPS tracks virtually all pieces of Express Mail from acceptance through delivery by scanning a unique 

barcode on each mail piece. 

Source: GAO analysis of USPS information. 

As a result of the measurement gaps listed above, measurement is not 

sufficiently complete to understand how well USPS is achieving the 

following: 

Page 25 GAO-06-733 USPS Delivery Performance Information
• performing its statutory mission of providing prompt and reliable service 

to patrons in all areas, including prompt delivery of all mail;

• delivering mail with different delivery standards, which helps fulfill the 

requirement that USPS provide mail service to meet the needs of different 

categories of mail and mail users; 

• providing expeditious handling of important letter mail, such as bills and 

statements sent via First-Class Mail; 

• fulfilling its statutory requirement to provide a maximum degree of 

effective and regular postal services to rural areas, communities, and small 

towns where post offices are not self-sustaining; and 

• identifying delivery problems, understanding the causes, and improving 

performance. 

The lack of any representative delivery performance data for most mail 

volume increases the financial risk to USPS, which faces increasing 

competition. If mailers are not satisfied with USPS’s delivery service, they 

could take their business elsewhere. For example, Standard Mail and bulk 

First-Class Mail are the largest segments not measured, collectively

accounting for close to three-quarters of mail volume and half of mail 

revenues. Standard Mail is USPS’s key growth product, but it must 

compete against multiple advertising media in a dynamic and highly 

competitive marketplace. Bulk First-Class Mail covers a significant share 

of USPS’s overhead costs—including maintaining the retail and delivery

networks—but is vulnerable to electronic communications and payment 

alternatives. In addition, USPS does not have representative delivery 

performance measures for Periodicals, which help USPS fulfill its 

statutory mandate to provide postal services to “bind the nation together” 

through business, educational, and literary correspondence; and for 

Package Services, such as Parcel Post, which provides the public with a 

low-cost option for sending packages. 

Incomplete information also impedes USPS’s potential for holding its 

managers accountable for delivery performance of all types of mail and for 

balancing increasing financial pressures with the need to maintain quality 

delivery service. Because delivery performance is measured for only some 

types of mail, and individual performance incentives are linked to the 

results, some mailers are concerned that in practice, this may skew 

delivery priorities and performance so that timely delivery is more 

important for the mail whose performance is measured than mail whose 

Page 26 GAO-06-733 USPS Delivery Performance Information
performance is not measured. For example, as we have reported, soon 

after USPS implemented its EXFC measurement system for First-Class 

Mail deposited into collection boxes, USPS increased its emphasis on 

timely First-Class Mail service.25 USPS managers at the local post office 

level were instructed to concentrate on particular activities that could 

improve EXFC scores, and more emphasis was placed on picking up mail

from collection boxes on schedule. 

Conversely, measurement gaps may impede effective collaborative efforts 

with mailers to quickly identify and resolve delivery problems, because 

both USPS officials and mailers have limited information for diagnostic 

purposes. In addition, measurement gaps impede the ability of external 

stakeholders, including Congress and PRC, to monitor accountability and

exercise oversight. Measurement gaps cause PRC to consider proposed 

postal rates without adequate information on the actual value of the 

service provided for each class of mail, which PRC by law must consider 

when recommending postal rates. In addition, PRC is hindered in 

considering USPS’s proposals for changes in the nature of postal services 

that are nationwide or substantially nationwide in scope, including the 

ongoing proceeding related to USPS’s network realignment. 

USPS’s limited performance measurement also affects USPS’s reporting of

its delivery performance and does not provide adequate transparency so 

that customers can understand performance results and trends. Although 

USPS recently made additional delivery performance information available 

on its Web site, it still does not communicate its delivery performance for 

all of its major types of mail, particularly those covered by its statutory 

monopoly to deliver letter mail. 

The main gap in USPS’s reporting of delivery performance results, as 

shown in table 4, continues to be for mail entered in bulk quantities, 

including Standard Mail and bulk First-Class Mail, which collectively 

constitute most of USPS’s mail volume and revenues. USPS also does not 

report delivery performance results for Periodicals and most Package 

Services. As previously discussed, USPS generally does not collect 

information on delivery performance results for these types of mail. 

USPS Reporting of 

Delivery Performance 

Lacks Adequate 

Transparency 

 25GAO, Operational Performance of the United States Postal Service, GAO/T-GGD-91-9 

(Washington, D.C.: Mar. 5, 1991). 

Page 27 GAO-06-733 USPS Delivery Performance Information
Table 4: USPS Delivery Performance Reporting by Type of Mail 

Type of mail USPS reporting practices 

Standard Mail and Periodicals USPS has not reported delivery performance data for this mail because it does not collect 

representative performance data. 

First-Class Mail USPS has reported results for First-Class Mail measured by EXFC, which does not cover bulk 

First-Class Mail and does not measure delivery performance in all areas of the country. For these 

reasons, EXFC covers less than half of First-Class Mail volume. USPS reports national EXFC 

results on its Web site for the most recent quarter. More complete quarterly data for each USPS 

Area and Performance Clustera is posted in a section of the USPS Web site devoted to Mailers’

Technical Advisory Committee (MTAC),b

 but not on www.usps.com, which is the primary Web site 

for public use. USPS reports annual EXFC results in such publications as its annual 

Comprehensive Statement on Postal Operations, its Annual Report, and its Strategic 

Transformation Plan. Some of these publications provide useful trend data, but they contain little 

explanation of results and trends. 

Package Services USPS reports only partial delivery performance results for some specific types of Package 

Services on its Web site for the most recent quarter. Results are reported for packages entered at 

retail locations (8 percent of Package Services volume) and are further limited to packages for 

which the mailer purchased Delivery Confirmation Service (1.2 percent of Package Services 

volume). In addition, results are reported for Parcel Select, which is a type of Package Services. 

Priority Mail USPS has reported partial delivery performance results on its Web site for the most recent

quarter. These results are limited to mail entered at postal retail locations for which the mailer 

purchased Delivery Confirmation. Such mail constitutes 4 percent of all Priority Mail volume. 

International Mail USPS has not publicly reported delivery performance results. Such data are not provided to PRC, 

which does not review international mail rates in postal rate cases. 

Express Mail USPS has reported only partial delivery performance results on its Web site for the most recent 

quarter. These results are limited to mail entered at postal retail locations, such as post offices. 

USPS has not reported complete results for Express Mail in its Comprehensive Statement, 

although this is the only class of mail for which USPS collects delivery performance data for all 

pieces of mail. However, USPS has publicly provided such results in rate cases in response to 

requests by interested parties participating in those proceedings. 

Source: GAO analysis of USPS information. 

a

USPS manages its field operations by dividing the nation into nine geographic areas and 80 

performance clusters. 

b

http://ribbs.usps.gov/files/mtac/exfc/. 

USPS’s reporting of delivery performance information has not adequately 

met information needs for congressional oversight purposes. Notably, 

USPS’s practices for reporting delivery performance information in its 

annual Comprehensive Statement on Postal Operations fall short of the 

longstanding statutory requirement for “data on the speed and reliability of 

service provided for the various classes of mail and types of mail 

service.”26 This requirement was enacted due to “the need for effective 

USPS’s Delivery Performance 

Reporting Is Not Adequate to 

Meet Oversight Needs 

 2639 U.S.C. §2401(e), initially added as 39 U.S.C. §2401(g) by Pub. L. 94-421, Postal 

Reorganization Act Amendments of 1976. 

Page 28 GAO-06-733 USPS Delivery Performance Information
oversight of postal operations to ensure that the postal services provided 

the public shall continue at an effective level and at reasonable rates.”27

Specifically, USPS has not included data on the speed and reliability of any 

entire class of mail in its annual Comprehensive Statement on Postal 

Operations. Instead, USPS has presented only national EXFC data, even 

though it collected data on timely delivery performance for all Express 

Mail, as well as some Priority Mail. The 2005 Comprehensive Statement on 

Postal Operations stated “while Express Mail and Priority Mail 

performance is tracked and has improved during the past 5 years, because 

these products are competitive, the data was considered proprietary and 

not published.” However, USPS reached an agreement with the PRC’s 

Office of Consumer Advocate last year to end this restriction and recently

began reporting some delivery performance data on a newly created page 

on its Web site for some Express Mail, Priority Mail, First-Class Mail, and 

Package Services. 

Moreover, USPS’s reporting practices under the Government Performance 

and Results Act (GPRA) of 1993 have provided less and less performance 

information for oversight purposes.28 USPS’s latest GPRA report, which 

was included in its 2005 Comprehensive Statement on Postal Operations, 

provided delivery performance targets (also referred to as performance 

goals) and results only for First-Class Mail measured by EXFC at the 

national level, with little accompanying explanation. For example, USPS 

reported that 87 percent of 3-day EXFC mail was delivered on time in 

fiscal year 2005, which did not meet its GPRA target of 90 percent, but 

USPS did not explain, as required by GPRA, why this specific target was 

not met. USPS also did not explain whether it considers the 90-percent 

goal—which remains unchanged for fiscal year 2006—impractical or 

unfeasible, or, alternatively, what plans USPS has for achieving this goal. 

USPS’s reporting of delivery performance information on its Web site has

recently improved but is still incomplete because it does not include 

performance results for all major types of mail. In April 2006, USPS posted 

delivery performance information on a newly created page of its Web site,

including selected results for the timely delivery of some Express Mail, 

Priority Mail, First-Class Mail, and Package Services. This information is 

Delivery Performance 

Information Has Recently 

Improved but Remains 

Incomplete

 27H.R. Rep. No. 94-1444, at 14 (1976). 

28GPRA requires that USPS submit strategic plans to the President and Congress, which are

to be updated at least every 3 years, and to submit annual performance plans and annual 

performance reports to Congress.

Page 29 GAO-06-733 USPS Delivery Performance Information
oriented to members of the general public who make decisions on how to 

mail parcels and other items that can be sent using different types of mail.

To facilitate such use, the information is linked to USPS’s Postage Rate 

Calculator and is accompanied by brief summaries of the applicable 

delivery standards for each type of mail. The new information addresses 

USPS’s written agreement with PRC’s Office of the Consumer Advocate29

in the 2005 rate case, which was implemented after further discussions 

between the two parties. USPS’s recent disclosures are a good step toward 

providing easily accessible information on delivery performance results on 

its Web site for key types of mail used by the public. 

The information on delivery performance results, however, did not cover 

major types of mail that are not measured—Standard Mail, bulk First-Class 

Mail, Periodicals, and most Package Services. Further, the information 

provided to the public was limited. First, performance results covered only

the most recent quarter, although results for some types of mail have 

varied by 7 percentage points or more from one quarter to another within 

the same fiscal year. Second, only partial information was provided for 

Priority Mail and Package Services. For example, the results for Priority 

Mail covered only 4 percent of total Priority Mail volume. This limited 

scope of measurement was not disclosed on USPS’s Web site. Without 

more complete reporting of delivery performance information, Congress 

and the American public do not have adequate information to determine 

how well USPS is accomplishing its mission of providing prompt and 

reliable delivery services. 

For the future, a possible model to enhance the completeness and 

usefulness of USPS’s reporting of delivery performance information would 

be to provide some information similar to the financial information that 

USPS already provides on its Web site. In the financial area, USPS has 

instituted a dedicated USPS Web page that has links to its financial 

reports, related reports and data, and timely disclosure of important 

developments. USPS also improved the quarterly financial reports that 

provide explanations for results and trends, as well as its financial 

outlook. 

 29The PRC’s Office of the Consumer Advocate represents the interests of the general public. 

The written agreement with USPS is available at 

http://www.prc.gov/docs/46/46232/OCA_Notice_with_Letter.pdf. 

Page 30 GAO-06-733 USPS Delivery Performance Information
USPS has made slow and inadequate progress in modernizing its delivery 

standards and in implementing delivery performance measurement for all 

major types of mail. USPS’s limited progress has left major gaps in each of

these areas, despite numerous recommendations for improvements that 

have been made in these areas over the years, including those by USPSmailer task forces and working groups, as well as some USPS initiatives to 

develop delivery performance measurement. Without management 

commitment and effective collaboration with mailers, it will be difficult for 

USPS to overcome technical challenges and achieve progress and results 

that are in the interest of both USPS and its customers in today’s 

competitive marketplace. 

Some of USPS’s and the mailers’ collaboration efforts over the years have

resulted in successes; but key recommendations from these efforts have 

yet to be realized. A broad cross section of mailer groups and mailers who

met with us shared their concerns about delivery standards and related 

information; delivery performance measurement and reporting; and 

implications of delivery performance information and gaps in this area. 

They expressed frustration with the slow pace of USPS’s progress in 

improving delivery performance information. As one mailers’ association 

recently wrote, “We do not expect the USPS to move tomorrow to the 

ultimate service performance measurement system, but the total lethargy 

to take any step forward is unacceptable.” Also, “the Postal Service’s lack 

of clockwork-like predictability is the number one reason for repeated 

industry calls for standards and measurements.” 

Progress In 

Developing Complete 

Delivery Performance 

Measurement Is 

Unsatisfactory Due To

Lack of Management 

Commitment and 

Effective 

Collaboration 

Key Recommendations 

from Collaboration Efforts 

Involving USPS and 

Mailers Have Not Been 

Implemented 

Many recommendations for improving performance information were 

made by committees that comprised USPS and mailers, as noted in table 5 

below. Some notable examples include the 1992 Competitive Services 

Task Force, the 1997 Blue Ribbon Committee, and the 1999 follow-up 

effort by a USPS-mailer working group. We asked USPS what actions, if 

any, it had taken on the 1999 recommendations, but we did not receive a 

response. 

Page 31 GAO-06-733 USPS Delivery Performance Information
Table 5: Timeline of Actions and Recommendations Related to Delivery Performance Measurement

Year Actions and recommendations

1990 USPS began to implement EXFC to measure delivery performance for some First-Class Mail in 86 cities covering 271 

3-digit ZIP Code areas. This system has been expanded and revised over the years, including expanding its coverage 

to 463 3-digit ZIP Code areas. 

1992 The Competitive Services Task Force, composed of more than 50 postal executives and industry representatives, 

recommended that 

• USPS improve its delivery standards and performance measurement for Standard Mail, First-Class Mail,

Periodicals, and Package Services. These and other recommendations were intended to stimulate the growth in 

mail volume and to support USPS’s financial viability by improving the quality of service and customer satisfaction, 

especially in areas where customers have choices. 

1993 USPS awarded a contract to implement delivery performance measurement for Standard Mail and Periodicals by 

measuring delivery performance for test pieces of mail. These efforts were discontinued in 1996. 

1997 The Blue Ribbon Committee, formed at the request of Postmaster General Runyon and included USPS and industry 

representatives, recommended that 

• USPS should work closely with its customers to define its service standards, publish these standards for each class 

of mail, and report on a regular basis its performance against those measures. 

1998 USPS implemented Delivery Confirmation Service, which is critical to delivery performance measurement for Express 

Mail, Priority Mail, and some types of Package Services mail, including Parcel Select. 

1999 A USPS-mailer working group followed up on the Blue Ribbon Committee, and after nearly 2 years of effort, the group 

made more extensive recommendations for improving delivery standards, measurement, and reporting. These 

included 

• defining service commitments and standards for all classes of mail based on existing mail processing and

transportation environments, which for bulk mail would also reflect how the mail is prepared (e.g., how it is 

presorted by ZIP Code and whether it is organized in trays or in sacks) and the type of mail processing facility 

where it enters the postal system; 

• using multiple technologies or measurement tools to measure service performance for all mail classes; 

• creating a database to provide actionable measurement data in a user-friendly fashion and in real-time, or close to 

real-time, so that mailers and USPS managers could determine the impact of various elements on its performance 

goals; and 

• providing aggregate data that compares actual performance with standards and goals, which would then be 

presented with breakdowns according to the delivery standards. 

The group recognized that USPS could take interim steps toward implementing the recommended database, stressed 

the need for mailer involvement in implementing the recommendations, and asked USPS to begin working on them 

immediately. 

2001 USPS began to fund implementation of its “information platform” to track mail in its processing and transportation 

networks. USPS officials said that Confirm Service, which provides tracking data on the progress of mail through 

USPS’s processing network, would be the “centerpiece of the information platform” and would provide data for 

“performance measurement” for letters and flat-sized mail. They said the “objective is to measure it so we can improve 

it.” 

However, the Confirm program had implementation difficulties, some of which have persisted despite years of study 

by working groups with USPS and mailer representatives. According to USPS, it does not use Confirm data for 

delivery performance measurement, in part because of continuing issues with the validity of mailer-provided 

information on bulk mailings. 

Page 32 GAO-06-733 USPS Delivery Performance Information
Year Actions and recommendations

2003 According to mailer newsletters, the USPS Chief Operating Officer, who is the current Deputy Postmaster General, 

told mailers that he would like them to join USPS in a commitment to implement delivery performance measurement, 

based on Confirm technology, for Standard Mail, bulk First-Class Mail, and Periodicals within a year and that USPS 

needed to redouble its efforts to resolve Confirm issues. 

2004 After several years of effort by multiple USPS-mailer working groups, an MTAC working group recommended that 

• USPS implement delivery performance measurement and reporting for bulk First-Class Mail using Confirm 

technology, and

• a follow-up group be formed to work on implementation issues. 

No follow-up ensued, however. USPS told us it took no action because of continuing Confirm data quality issues and 

related cost issues. 

2005 Another MTAC working group dealing with service performance measurement asked that the MTAC Leadership

Committee, which includes USPS and mailer representatives, address continuing Confirm issues. 

Source: GAO analysis of USPS information and other sources, such as reports of the above committees. 

Impediments Remain to 

Implementing 

Performance Measurement 

for all Major Types of Mail 

Multiple impediments have contributed to USPS’s slow progress toward 

implementing delivery performance measurement for all major types of 

mail. The most important impediment is the lack of management 

commitment and effective collaboration with the mailing industry to 

follow up on recommendations for improvements and to resolve issues 

between USPS and mailers. Additional impediments include technological 

limitations, limited mailer participation in providing information needed to

facilitate performance measurement, data quality deficiencies, and costs. 

USPS has not provided management commitment and effectively 

collaborated with mailers to develop delivery performance measures for 

all major types of mail. To achieve effective collaboration, it is necessary 

to build consensus among diverse mailers with different information 

needs, as well as between mailers and USPS. Such a challenge requires 

leadership and an effective process for follow up, particularly given the 

complexity of measurement issues and the time frame that likely will be 

required to overcome longstanding issues. Based on our discussions with

mailers and postal officials, some of the commitment and collaboration 

challenges have included:

Lack of Management 

Commitment and Effective 

Collaboration 

• USPS has lacked commitment to implementing delivery performance 

measurement and reporting for all major types of mail; particularly, as 

some mailers told us, USPS has tended to resist greater transparency,

oversight, and accountability. A USPS senior vice president told us that 

USPS had no plans for implementing additional measures of delivery 

performance. A second USPS senior vice president explained that 

although some pieces of mail may be tracked as automated equipment 

reads barcodes on the mail, enabling more information for management 

Page 33 GAO-06-733 USPS Delivery Performance Information
and diagnostic purposes, these pieces are unrepresentative, and USPS has 

no plans for using mail tracking data to develop representative measures 

of delivery performance. As for major types of mail that are not measured, 

USPS has publicly reported that it has no system in place for measuring 

service performance for Standard Mail on a systemwide basis and 

currently has no plans for the development of such a system.30 Similarly, 

USPS officials told us that it has no plans to develop representative 

measures of delivery performance for bulk First-Class Mail, which, after 

Standard Mail, is the second-largest volume of mail that is not measured. 

Further, USPS stated in its Strategic Transformation Plan that it would be 

prepared to extend performance measurement and reporting to additional 

mail classes as it achieves high levels of delivery service performance. A 

USPS vice president told us that USPS agreed in 2005 to begin reporting 

delivery performance results on its Web site for Express Mail and Priority 

Mail because USPS had already improved delivery performance for these 

types of mail to high levels, and therefore the results could help USPS 

promote these types of mail. This statement contrasts with a general 

performance principle that a major use, if not the major use, of regularly 

collected outcome information should be by program managers 

themselves to improve the effectiveness of their programs.31 As we have 

reported, the benefit of collecting performance information is only fully 

realized when this information is actually used by managers to make 

decisions oriented toward improving results.32

• Although many groups have issued recommendations to USPS, followthrough on key recommendations did not occur. USPS often did not 

officially respond to the recommendations at the time they were made and 

did not implement the recommendations, so it was not clear whether 

USPS agreed or intended to implement the recommendations. Moreover, 

once a group completed its report with recommendations to USPS, it 

disbanded, which limited the continuity that otherwise could have been 

helpful for follow-up. 

• Effective collaboration has been impeded by USPS’s resistance to sharing 

some diagnostic data it collected with mailers. In general, USPS has 

 30USPS response to ValPak interrogatory in Evolutionary Network Development Service 

Changes proceeding, USPS-T1-15, PRC Docket No. N2006-1, filed Apr. 25, 2006. 

31National Academy of Public Administration, How Federal Programs Use Outcome 

Information: Opportunities for Federal Mangers (Washington, D.C.: May 2003). 

32GAO-05-927. 

Page 34 GAO-06-733 USPS Delivery Performance Information
maintained that delivery performance data below the national level are 

proprietary, such as data on performance related to any particular mail 

processing facility or transportation segment. Therefore, according to 

USPS, it should not be required to publicly disclose these data in PRC 

proceedings in response to requests by any interested party. However, 

voluntarily sharing diagnostic delivery performance information with 

mailers experiencing delivery problems could be useful for both USPS and

mailers to collaboratively develop an understanding of whether the 

problems are limited to particular mailings or are systemic—resulting 

from specific USPS operational problems. Such an understanding can help

in identifying the cause of delivery problems and in implementing 

corrective action. Although USPS representatives may communicate with

mailers about these problems, the mailers told us they often lack sufficient 

timely and actionable data on delivery problems. They have called for 

USPS to share more aggregate delivery performance information. 

The absence of management commitment and effective collaboration 

matters for the future because give-and-take by both USPS and mailers 

will be required to achieve consensus on designing measurement systems 

that meet different information needs, finding ways to cover the 

associated USPS costs, increasing mailer participation in providing 

information needed to facilitate performance measurement, and 

overcoming remaining impediments to implementing valid measurement 

systems. In this regard, we are encouraged that USPS has engaged in 

collaborative efforts to improve performance measurement for Parcel 

Select, starting with the Deputy Postmaster General reaching out to the 

Parcel Shippers Association (PSA), which represents major Parcel Select 

mailers, and offering to engage in collaborative efforts. The Deputy 

Postmaster General assigned responsibility to a single manager for followup. USPS followed through by reaching consensus on standards, 

performance measurement, and the sharing of aggregate data, which 

required actions by both USPS and mailers to successfully implement. 

According to PSA officials, the standards, measures, and performance 

incentives have led to a marked improvement in delivery performance for 

Parcel Select; and, as a result, USPS has been able to maintain its viability 

within the competitive package services market. The USPS official with 

responsibility in this area made similar comments. In addition, USPS 

recently proposed requiring mailers to barcode some Parcel Select items; 

if this increases barcoding, it will facilitate delivery performance 

measurement. USPS’s Parcel Select provides a successful model for 

updating the delivery standards for other types of mail, implementing 

delivery performance measurement, and holding USPS accountable for 

results. 

Page 35 GAO-06-733 USPS Delivery Performance Information
Similarly, USPS worked with other stakeholders to implement delivery

performance measurement for Global Express Mail, which is managed by 

an international organization called the Express Mail Service (EMS) 

Cooperative.33 Timely delivery of EMS items, including Global Express 

Mail, has reportedly improved since delivery standards and measurement 

were implemented. 

Several other impediments have limited the development of delivery 

performance measures for all major types of mail. Two key impediments 

involve limitations in technology, which limited USPS’s ability to track 

mail from entry to delivery; and limited mailer participation in providing 

information needed to facilitate performance measurements, which 

limited the representativeness of the performance data collected. In 

addition, data quality deficiencies and cost concerns have impeded 

progress. 

Technological limitations. USPS has not fully implemented technology 

that will enable it to track barcoded mail through its mail processing and 

transportation networks that could play a part in measuring performance 

when completed. Although some implementation, such as upgrading 

barcodes for individual mail pieces and mail containers, is under way, full 

implementation will take years. According to the Deputy Postmaster 

General, USPS expects to make substantial progress in resolving these 

technological limitations over the next 5 years. For example, near the end 

of this decade, USPS is planning to install new automated equipment to 

sort flat-sized mail, such as large envelopes and catalogs, into the order it 

is delivered, which promises to greatly expand the automatic scanning of 

barcodes on mail pieces. More generally, USPS officials said that USPS is 

working toward tracking mailings from acceptance (which they said will 

depend on mailers providing accurate data) through USPS’s mail 

processing and transportation networks. Such information is a step 

toward additional delivery performance measurement. In the interim, 

however, major gaps remain in USPS’s ability to track most types of mail.

Limited mailer participation. Mailer participation is low in applying 

unique barcodes to mail pieces for tracking purposes, which means that 

the tracking data cannot be considered representative of overall 

performance. Using USPS’s Confirm Service, mailers can apply unique 

Other Impediments for 

Measuring Delivery 

Performance 

 33The EMS Cooperative has more than 130 members, including USPS and foreign postal 

administrations. 

Page 36 GAO-06-733 USPS Delivery Performance Information
barcodes to Standard Mail, First-Class Mail, and Periodicals, when the mail

is letter or flat-sized and can be sorted on USPS automation equipment. 

Although these types of mail constitute most of the total mail volume, less

than 2 percent of total mail volume is tracked by the Confirm program. 

Participation in Confirm is limited, in part because its use is voluntary, 

mailers must pay a fee to participate, and mailers also incur additional 

expenses related to their participation, such as for mail preparation. 

Although USPS officials expect mailer participation to increase as 

improved technology is implemented, they expect participation to 

continue to be unrepresentative, with some mailers more likely to 

participate than others. They explained that Confirm will continue to be of 

greatest interest to large mailers with well-developed capabilities to use 

tracking data. These mailers include large companies that track bills and 

remittance mail and large advertisers that track mailed catalogs in order to 

efficiently schedule staff and inventory. 

Another factor in low participation is the mailers’ continuing use of nonUSPS delivery performance measurements that they have established or 

paid third parties to do so, such as “seeding” their mailings with mail sent 

to persons who report when it is received.

34 As long as a nonrandom group 

of mailers participates in Confirm—which is likely to be the case for the 

foreseeable future—the aggregate results will not be representative as a 

measure of overall systemwide performance. Thus, the main options for 

obtaining representative results for any given type of mail (such as bulk 

First-Class Mail) would appear to be (1) obtaining sufficient participation 

by all mailers who send that type of mail or (2) obtaining information on 

mail that is sent by a representative sample of mailers. For either option, 

USPS, mailer groups, and mailers would need to collaborate to achieve the 

level of mailer participation necessary to generate representative 

performance data that could be useful to all parties. 

Data quality. According to USPS, data quality deficiencies have been 

another problem in measuring delivery performance, because USPS has no 

way to determine when it receives bulk mail, such as Standard Mail and 

Periodicals, which is commonly referred to as obtaining a valid “start the 

clock” time. At present, USPS relies on mailer-provided information 

submitted with each mailing, which USPS officials told us does not always

 34For example, Red Tag News Publications Association, a nonprofit association of 64

magazines and other publications that generate about 830,000 pieces of Periodicals mail 

annually, has 1,000 monitors who receive magazines and who report when they arrive. 

Page 37 GAO-06-733 USPS Delivery Performance Information
include accurate information on when and where the mail was submitted. 

Based on their experience, USPS officials do not consider mailer-provided 

information to be sufficiently accurate for measuring delivery

performance. 

The issue of inaccurate data has persisted for years despite repeated 

efforts by working groups composed of USPS and mailer representatives. 

In this regard, USPS officials told us that resolving this issue would likely

entail additional costs for mailers, which they said mailers have not been 

willing to pay; however, some mailers disagree with this view. On the 

positive side, the USPS Senior Vice President for Intelligent Mail and 

Address Quality told us that USPS has initiatives under way that should 

help ameliorate data quality deficiencies. 

Costs. Senior USPS officials told us that currently, it would be too costly 

for USPS to create new representative performance measures for any 

major type of mail. They said that given current technology, USPS would 

incur substantial costs to implement delivery performance measurement 

for all major types of mail if USPS were to use bar codes to track every 

mail piece from when it enters the postal system to when it is delivered. A 

senior USPS official told us that delivery performance measurement for all 

mail—which would have involved tracking more than 210 billion pieces of 

mail in fiscal year 2005—would cost hundreds of millions of dollars and 

expressed doubt that mailers would want to pay those additional costs 

even in return for performance data. In this regard, sampling approaches 

could be used to obtain representative data on delivery performance that 

would likely be much less costly than seeking to measure delivery 

performance for every piece of mail.

A related cost issue is how USPS would recover the associated

measurement costs from mailers and the impact of this decision on mailer 

participation that would be needed for USPS to measure delivery 

performance. As the Confirm program illustrates, a fee-based program 

creates a disincentive for mailers to participate. In contrast, USPS chose to

build its tracking costs into the rate base for Parcel Select, so that the 

costs would be shared by all Parcel Select mailers. USPS officials told us 

they had rejected this approach for other types of mail for several reasons, 

including the uncertain benefits to USPS and mailers’ preference for lower 

rates, particularly for mailers who would not wish to pay the costs 

associated with collecting delivery performance data. 

However, some major mailer groups disagree with USPS’s perspectives of

mailer willingness to cover costs as a key impediment to implementing 

Page 38 GAO-06-733 USPS Delivery Performance Information
representative measures of delivery performance for all major types of 

mail. The Mailers Council, a coalition of over 50 major mailing 

associations, corporations, and nonprofit organizations, told us that its 

members would be willing to pay additional USPS costs, within reason, for 

delivery performance measurement, stating that such costs would be small 

compared to total postal costs. Until USPS commits to developing 

additional representative measures of delivery performance for all major 

types of mail and considers various approaches for measuring the delivery 

performance of its major types of mail, discusses their usefulness and 

feasibility with mailers, and estimates the associated costs, it will be 

difficult to get beyond USPS’s assertion that measurement is costprohibitive and mailers’ assertions that the costs could be relatively low 

and that they would be willing to bear them. 

Although USPS plans to improve its service performance, it has no current

plans to implement additional representative measures of delivery 

performance. USPS states in its latest Strategic Transformation Plan that it 

plans to improve the quality of postal services by continuing to focus on 

the end-to-end service performance of all mail. Further, it states that 

“customers expect timely, reliable mail service, and the Postal Service has

delivered. Under the 2002 Transformation Plan, the Postal Service 

successfully improved service performance across all product lines.” We 

acknowledge and agree with USPS’s emphasis on improved service 

performance. However, we do not know whether service has improved 

across all product lines, nor does USPS, because as we noted earlier, USPS

does not collect or provide representative delivery performance 

information that would be needed to support this statement. USPS has 

information from various operational data systems, but this information 

does not amount to delivery performance measurement. Gaps in delivery 

performance measurement information are hindering USPS and mailers in 

identifying opportunities to improve service across all product lines, as 

well as effectively addressing these opportunities by understanding 

whether problems are specific to a particular mailer or systemic problems 

in USPS’s mail processing and transportation networks. Without complete 

delivery performance information that is regularly reported, stakeholders 

must rely on the publicly available information that USPS chooses to 

provide, which often highlights only positive results. For example, in 

discussing its strategy for providing timely, reliable end-to-end delivery

service, the Strategic Transformation Plan states “customer satisfaction 

scores have never been higher.” Although customer satisfaction 

information is valuable and useful to USPS and other organizations that 

provide products and services, it does not measure delivery performance. 

USPS Plans to Improve 

Service Performance, But 

Not to Implement 

Representative Measures 

of Delivery Performance 

Across All Product Lines 

Page 39 GAO-06-733 USPS Delivery Performance Information
USPS’s currently available delivery performance information does not 

provide sufficient context to determine (1) actual delivery performance 

results for all of its product lines, (2) how performance is changing over 

time through the assessment of trend information, and (3) whether USPS’s 

delivery performance is competitive. Timeliness is a critical factor in 

today’s competitive business environment, where many companies 

operate with just-in-time inventories and rely on timely delivery to meet 

their needs. It is likely to become even more important in the future. Thus, 

reliable delivery performance information reported in a timely manner is

critical for high-performing organizations to be successful in this 

environment. USPS’s Strategic Transformation Plan discusses strategies 

for providing timely, reliable mail delivery, which include plans to improve 

the quantity and accuracy of service performance information collected 

through passive scanning and improved start-the-clock information, 

provide customers with information about their own mailings, and create 

better diagnostic data so that bottlenecks can be eliminated throughout 

the system. These are all positive steps needed to improve delivery 

performance information. However, the Plan falls short of committing to 

developing end-to-end delivery performance information that could be 

used to measure how well USPS is achieving its strategy of improving 

service performance across all product lines. Further, the Plan does not 

discuss what delivery performance information USPS plans to report 

publicly. 

Pending legislation does address what delivery performance information 

Congress would like to see USPS report in the future. However, USPS 

could demonstrate that it wants to provide leadership in this area by not 

waiting for the legislation to be enacted. Instead, USPS could clearly 

commit to developing representative end-to-end delivery performance 

measures for all of its product lines. USPS could also take the lead in 

collaborating with mailers to implement such performance measures. As 

we previously stated, effective collaboration with mailers is needed to

resolve the impediments that hinder progress in this area, such as data 

quality issues involving how to improve the accuracy of start-the-clock 

information. Concerns about cost could be addressed by exploring options

such as sampling in collaboration with the mailers to determine how best 

to measure delivery performance at much less cost than attempting to 

track every mail piece. Such collaboration would also allow the parties to 

determine their information needs, explore cost trade-offs associated with

various options, and resolve associated data quality issues. In its letter to

us, PostCom noted that delivery performance measurement could be 

implemented in many ways that would not be costly. PostCom said that 

measurement costs could be affected by multiple factors, such as whether 

Page 40 GAO-06-733 USPS Delivery Performance Information
all mail pieces or a sample are tracked; whether tracking is to the point of 

delivery vs. the last automated scan plus a “predicted” time for delivery; 

whether data is collected automatically by equipment in a passive scan vs. 

other methods requiring USPS employees to scan mail; and whether USPS 

technology developments will be used exclusively to measure 

performance or primarily for processing the mail. 

We recognize that it will take time to resolve impediments to implement 

additional delivery performance measures. However, USPS’s leadership, 

commitment, and effective collaboration with mailers are critical elements 

to implementing a complete set of delivery performance measures that will 

enable USPS and its customers to understand the quality of delivery 

services, identify opportunities for improvement, and track progress in 

achieving timely delivery. 

USPS delivery standards are not as useful and transparent as they should 

be. Standards for key types of mail—including Standard Mail, USPS’s main 

growth product—are largely static, and do not fully reflect current 

operations. Thus, they cannot be used to set realistic expectations for mail 

delivery, to establish benchmarks for measuring performance, or to hold 

individuals accountable through pay-for-performance incentives tied to 

measurable results. USPS’s delivery performance measurement and 

reporting is not complete, because it does not cover key types of mail—

including Standard Mail, bulk First-Class Mail, Periodicals, and most 

Package Services. Further, despite recent disclosures on its Web site for 

some types of mail, USPS’s reporting remains limited and has fallen short 

of statutory requirements to include specified delivery performance 

information. Because of gaps in delivery performance measurement and 

reporting, stakeholders, including the Congress, cannot understand how 

well USPS is fulfilling its basic mission, nor can they understand delivery 

performance results and trends. As a result, USPS and mailers are 

hindered in identifying and diagnosing delivery problems so that 

corrective action can be implemented. This situation increases the 

financial risk to USPS, which faces increasing competition. If mailers are 

not satisfied with USPS’s delivery service, they could take their business 

elsewhere. 

Prospects for progress continue to be uncertain, in part because USPS has 

not committed itself to modernizing its delivery standards or developing 

representative performance measures for all major types of mail. USPS 

management commitment and more effective collaboration with mailers 

will be critical for resolving impediments to delivery performance 

Conclusions 

Page 41 GAO-06-733 USPS Delivery Performance Information
measurement and reporting. Give-and-take by both parties will be required 

to achieve consensus on designing measurement systems that meet 

different information needs, increasing mailer participation in providing 

information needed to facilitate performance measurement, addressing 

data deficiencies, finding ways to cover the associated costs, and 

overcoming impediments. 

To facilitate greater progress in developing complete delivery performance 

information, we recommend that the Postmaster General take the 

following four actions: 

1. modernize delivery standards for all major types of mail so that they 

reflect USPS operations and can be used as benchmarks for 

understanding and measuring delivery performance; 

2. provide a clear commitment in USPS’s Comprehensive Statement on 

Postal Operations to develop a complete set of delivery performance 

measures for each major type of mail that is representative of overall 

delivery performance; 

3. implement representative delivery performance measures for all major 

types of mail by providing more effective collaboration with mailers 

and others to ensure effective working relationships, follow-through, 

accountability, and results; and 

4. improve the transparency of delivery performance standards, 

measures, and results by publicly disclosing more information, 

including in its Comprehensive Statement on Postal Operations and 

other annual performance reports to Congress, as well as providing 

easily accessible information on its Web site. 

USPS provided comments on a draft of this report in a letter from the 

Postmaster General dated July 14, 2006. These comments are summarized 

below and included as appendix III. In addition, the Postmaster General 

provided oral comments in a meeting on June 26, 2006, with suggestions 

for further clarifying information, which were incorporated where 

appropriate.

USPS’s letter recognized that its delivery performance measurement and 

reporting are not complete and provided detailed information about its 

ongoing and planned efforts to ultimately measure service performance 

and provide transparency for all classes of mail. USPS stated that it 

Recommendations for 

Executive Action 

Agency Comments 

and Our Evaluation 

Page 42 GAO-06-733 USPS Delivery Performance Information
intends to lead the efforts required to reach this goal by working 

collaboratively with others in the mailing industry. USPS’s letter further 

stated that ultimately, “the core issue is service—and according to all 

indicators, we are succeeding in our goal of continuous service 

improvement. We are not satisfied with maintaining the status quo.” 

USPS stated that although it recognizes the desire for aggregate service 

performance results for all mail categories, it believes that it serves 

mailers best by focusing first on providing service measurement and 

diagnostics to individual customers, then looking to provide aggregate 

results. Regarding the draft report’s findings related to service standards, 

USPS disagreed that some of its delivery standards are outdated and

stated that its service standards are modern and up-to-date. USPS did not 

directly comment on three of our four recommendations. On our fourth 

recommendation concerning improving the transparency of delivery 

performance standards, measures, and results, USPS commented that its 

service standards should be more visible and stated that it is exploring 

making information related to its service standards available through 

additional channels, including its Web site. 

We are encouraged by USPS’s commitment to ultimately measure service 

performance and provide transparency for all classes of mail and its 

intention to take the lead in working with mailers to achieve this goal. 

Further, we recognize in our report USPS’s ongoing efforts to implement 

technology that will track mail throughout USPS’s mail processing system, 

which is a step toward improved delivery performance measurement. We 

also agree, as we noted in our report, that mailer participation is necessary 

to generate representative delivery performance measures for all mail 

categories. USPS’s letter details many ongoing and planned efforts 

necessary to improve performance measurement, as well as specific 

actions that USPS calls on mailers to take to enable its vision of 

measurement. We agree with USPS’s emphasis on improving service, but 

we continue to have questions about whether USPS’s efforts will result in 

representative delivery performance measures for all major types of mail. 

For most major types of mail, USPS’s vision of service performance 

measurement is generally limited to tracking mail through its mail 

processing and transportation networks, which is not the same as 

measuring end-to-end delivery performance against USPS delivery 

standards. Considering USPS’s lack of commitment to implementing a 

complete set of delivery performance measures, as well as the lack of 

timeframes in USPS’s letter, we also have questions about how long it will 

take to achieve this goal. We recognize that it will take time to implement 

many of the ongoing and planned initiatives described in USPS’s letter. 

Thus, USPS’s sustained leadership is critical to ensure that effective

Page 43 GAO-06-733 USPS Delivery Performance Information
collaboration with mailers takes place so that USPS implements and 

reports on representative delivery performance measures for all major 

types of mail. We also believe that USPS should establish specific 

timeframes so that timely progress can be made in this area. 

USPS’s letter states that it will first provide individual mailers with 

delivery information before working to provide aggregate delivery 

performance information, stating that aggregate information on average 

performance may be irrelevant to mailers. We do not believe that these are 

mutually exclusive goals that have to be addressed sequentially, because 

both aggregate and individual performance information have benefits that 

would meet varying needs of different postal stakeholders. We recognize 

and agree that mailers want to have performance information related to 

their own mailings to determine the status of their mail as it moves 

through USPS’s system. However, appropriate aggregate information is 

needed to put mailer-specific information into context so that USPS and 

mailers can understand whether any delivery problems that occur are 

specific to particular mailers or reflect systemic issues within USPS’s 

processing and transportation networks. Appropriate aggregate 

information may need to be more specific than the average performance 

for a general type of mail, so that comparisons can take geographic and 

other variations in performance into account and thereby provide useful 

diagnostic information to USPS and mailers. USPS has recognized this 

principle in its EXFC measure of First-Class Mail deposited into collection

boxes, which provides aggregate data that can be broken down by 

geographic area, delivery standard (e.g., results for 1-day, 2-day, and 3-day 

mail), and other subgroups of this mail. Moreover, USPS’s diagnostic data 

is not representative and does not amount to delivery performance 

measurement. USPS’s letter does not fully recognize the critical 

importance of aggregate delivery performance measurement for 

accountability purposes, by parties both inside and outside USPS. As 

USPS’s letter demonstrates, where USPS has delivery performance 

measures, it can report on how well it is achieving one of its primary goals 

to improve delivery services. However, USPS is not in a position to make 

such assessments for more than four-fifths of its mail volume, because it

does not measure and report its delivery performance for most types of 

mail. 

USPS’s letter also states that “we share the mutual goal of complete 

network transparency to provide mailers with a comprehensive view of 

the service they receive.” Our view of transparency is broader than 

providing mailers with data on their own mail. As a federal government 

entity with a monopoly on some delivery services, USPS is accountable to 

Page 44 GAO-06-733 USPS Delivery Performance Information
the American public, Congress, PRC, USPS’s Board of Governors, and 

postal customers for the delivery services it provides. However, as noted 

earlier, stakeholders cannot understand how well USPS is fulfilling its 

basic mission due to gaps in delivery performance measurement and 

reporting, nor can they understand delivery performance results and 

trends. USPS’s letter does not address what actions USPS plans to take to

improve the transparency of publicly available delivery performance 

information. Without sufficient transparency, oversight and accountability 

are limited. 

We disagree with USPS’s comments that its service standards are modern 

and up-to-date. Consistent with the input we received from numerous 

mailers, we believe that these standards do not work for the mailers and 

for USPS. As we noted in our report, some of USPS’s delivery standards, 

including those for Standard Mail, some Periodicals and most Package 

Services, do not reflect changes in how mail is prepared and delivered.

These standards are unsuitable as benchmarks for setting realistic 

expectations for timely mail delivery, for measuring delivery performance, 

or improving service, oversight, and accountability. 

Specific comments in the USPS letter were organized into the following 

six sections: (1) “Focus on Service,” (2) “Service Performance Results,” 

(3) “Some Areas of Concern,” (4) “Modern Service Standards,” 

(5) “Measurement Systems and Diagnostic Tools,” and (6) “Customer 

Collaboration and Reporting.” These comments are summarized below 

with our analysis. 

Focus on Service: USPS commented that one of its primary goals in its 

Strategic Transformation Plan 2006-2010, is to improve service. USPS 

said this goal is supported by strategies that include a “balanced 

scorecard” that uses service performance metrics to support personal and 

unit accountability. Goals for these metrics, which include delivery 

performance measures as well as operational indicators that USPS said are 

critical to on-time service performance, are incorporated into USPS’s payfor-performance incentives for its managers. We agree with USPS’s focus 

on improving service and holding its managers accountable for results. 

Our draft report noted that USPS had recognized the importance of the 

timely delivery of mail and integrated performance targets and results for 

some types of mail into its performance management system. However, 

USPS has not yet achieved its aim of a “balanced scorecard” for delivery 

performance because its delivery performance measures cover less than

one-fifth of mail volume, and these measures do not cover Standard Mail,

bulk First-Class Mail, Periodicals, and most Package Services mail. This 

Page 45 GAO-06-733 USPS Delivery Performance Information
gap impedes USPS’s potential for holding its managers accountable for 

delivery performance of all types of mail and for balancing increasing 

financial pressures with the need to maintain quality delivery service. 

Service Performance Results: USPS stated that its focus on service has 

resulted in “record performance across all mail categories,” adding that its 

measurement systems for First-Class Mail, Priority Mail, and Express Mail 

show that USPS had met or exceeded the performance targets it set for 

them. However, we do not know whether service has improved across all 

mail categories, nor does USPS, because as we noted earlier, USPS does 

not collect or provide representative delivery performance information 

that would be needed to support this statement. Further, in fiscal year 

2005, USPS did not achieve record delivery performance for all categories 

of mail that it measured, and did not meet all of the delivery performance 

targets it had set. For example, the 2005 Annual Performance Report

included within the 2005 Statement on Comprehensive Operations

reported that on-time performance for First-Class Mail with a 3-day 

delivery standard, as measured by EXFC, was 87 percent in fiscal year 

2005, down 2 percentage points from the previous fiscal year and falling 

short of USPS’s goal of 90 percent. On-time delivery scores for Priority 

Mail also declined over the same period. 

With respect to reporting on its delivery performance, USPS commented in 

its letter that it has posted delivery performance results on its Web site, 

including for some of its competitive products. As our draft report stated,

USPS improved its reporting of delivery performance results by starting to

post information on its Web site in April 2006, including selected results

for the past quarter for the timely delivery of some Express Mail, Priority 

Mail, First-Class Mail, and Package Services. We stated that USPS’s recent 

disclosures are a good step toward providing easily accessible information 

on delivery performance results on its Web site for key types of mail used 

by the public. However, we also found that the information is incomplete 

because it does not include delivery performance results for all major 

types of mail. Some major types of mail are not measured, while the 

information on the Web site provided limited information for mail that is 

measured, and did not fully disclose the limited scope of this 

measurement. We continue to believe that without more complete 

reporting of delivery performance information, Congress and the 

American public do not have adequate information to determine how well 

USPS is accomplishing its mission of providing prompt and reliable 

delivery services. 

Page 46 GAO-06-733 USPS Delivery Performance Information
Some Areas of Concern: USPS stated that our draft report did not fully 

consider some important issues related to performance measurement. 

USPS commented that although our draft report did discuss data quality 

issues, it had not accounted for some relevant factors, including the 

completeness, accuracy, and validity of mailer information submitted 

when mail is entered. However, our draft report included a discussion of 

the major impediments that have contributed to USPS’s slow progress 

toward implementing delivery performance measures for all major types 

of mail, including impediments relating to the quality of mailer information 

submitted when mail is accepted into USPS’s system, which is needed for 

“start the clock” delivery information. Our draft report provided USPS’s 

view that mailers do not provide accurate information on its mailings that 

would be needed to “start the clock” for delivery performance 

measurement and noted that this issue has been persistent despite 

repeated efforts by USPS-mailer committees. In discussing measurement 

issues, USPS further commented that the mailing industry must embrace 

changes such as improved address quality and increased presort accuracy.

We believe that although these outcomes would facilitate USPS handing of 

mail, this should not be a reason to delay measurement of delivery 

performance. Other federal entities routinely set performance goals and 

measure results for important activities that are partly outside their 

control, and use the results to work with their partners to improve their 

performance. 

On another matter, USPS stated that our report’s discussion of USPS 

attempts to measure performance did not account for complexities unique 

to Standard Mail and Periodicals. USPS also stated that its experience has 

demonstrated that it is particularly difficult to design a broad and effective 

measurement system for Standard Mail and Periodicals, explaining that its 

previous attempts were unsuccessful for reasons including lack of 

information on the acceptance of this mail into USPS’s system and 

complexities relating to different types of mail preparation and entry. We 

disagree that our draft report did not adequately account for these 

complexities and believe USPS can address these complexities to 

successfully implement delivery performance measures for Standard Mail 

and Periodicals. As noted above, our draft report discussed issues in 

obtaining information needed to “start the clock” on delivery performance 

measurement. We also recognized that Standard Mail and Periodicals 

have complexities in mail preparation and entry that USPS should 

incorporate into its delivery performance standards so that they can serve 

as suitable benchmarks for measurement. Further, our draft report 

provided a detailed discussion of attempts to measure performance by 

task forces and working groups comprised of USPS and mailer 

Page 47 GAO-06-733 USPS Delivery Performance Information
representatives, who were well versed in the complexities of Standard 

Mail and Periodicals. These groups repeatedly recommended that USPS 

measure the delivery performance of Standard Mail and Periodicals, 

including the 1997 recommendations of the Blue Ribbon Panel and the 

1999 recommendations of a follow-up USPS/mailer working group that 

were made years after USPS’s short-lived attempt to measure delivery 

performance of Standard Mail and Periodicals. The 1999 

recommendations stated that USPS should implement performance 

measurement for Standard Mail, Periodicals, and other classes of mail in a 

manner that would provide aggregate performance data with breakdowns 

according to delivery standards, which for bulk mail such as Standard Mail 

and Periodicals would reflect how the mail is prepared and the type of

postal facility where it enters USPS’s system. The working group asked 

USPS to begin working on implementing these recommendations 

immediately. As we concluded, gaps in performance measurement mean 

that stakeholders cannot understand how well USPS is fulfilling its basic 

mission, nor can they understand results and trends—a situation that also 

increases the financial risk to USPS, which faces increasing competition. 

Modern Service Standards: USPS stated that our draft report did not fully 

acknowledge its long history of establishing and revising delivery 

standards. We disagree because our report provides a detailed history of 

delivery standards, noting that USPS has updated its standards for some 

mail, such as First-Class Mail and Parcel Select. Our draft report also 

stated that delivery standards are outdated for several types of mail, 

including Standard Mail, some Periodicals, and most Package Services, 

because they have not been updated in many years to reflect significant 

changes in the way mail is prepared and delivered. In addition, USPS 

commented that the concept of modernized delivery standards may, for 

some, denote upgrading service levels, warning that upgrading service 

would result in increased costs and prices. However, our draft report does 

not discuss whether service needs to be upgraded and focuses instead on

the need for USPS delivery standards to reflect current USPS operations 

including presorting and destination entry. 

Measurement Systems and Diagnostic Tools: USPS commented that the

description of USPS performance measurement systems in our draft 

report was incomplete and unintentionally misleading. USPS commented 

that the draft report overlooked “the fact” that EXFC, which measures 

First-Class Mail deposited into collection boxes, is reflective of delivery 

performance for all First-Class Mail including bulk First-Class Mail. USPS 

stated that bulk First-Class Mail is handled in the same manner as 

collection box mail. USPS’s comment about EXFC is contradicted by years 

Page 48 GAO-06-733 USPS Delivery Performance Information
of USPS reporting, including in its annual Comprehensive Statement on 

Postal Operations and its quarterly press releases, that “EXFC is not a 

systemwide measure of all First-Class Mail performance.” USPS has 

repeatedly used this statement in response to a recommendation made in a 

report issued in 2000 by the USPS Office of Inspector General, which also 

found that EXFC does not consider the delivery performance of bulk FirstClass Mail.35

Customer Collaboration and Reporting: USPS commented that many of 

its service measurement systems and diagnostic tools were designed 

jointly or in collaboration with its customers. Our draft report discusses 

USPS’s many collaborative efforts with mailers, but, as noted previously, 

our concern is that USPS has not implemented key recommendations that 

have been made since the early 1990s by numerous USPS/mailer 

committees. Further, our work found that the lack of adequate and 

continued management commitment and effective collaboration with the 

mailing industry to follow through on recommendations for improvements

and to resolve issues is an overall theme in understanding the slow 

progress being made in developing and implementing methods of 

measuring delivery performance. Thus, while we are encouraged that 

USPS presented several initiatives to develop the ability to track mail 

through its mail processing and transportation networks, as outlined in 

our report and our analysis of USPS’s comment letter, we continue to 

believe that there needs to be greater progress in implementing 

representative measures of end-to-end delivery performance. 

We are sending copies of this report to the Ranking Minority Member of 

the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, 

the Chairman and Ranking Minority Member of the House Committee on 

Government Reform, Rep. John M. McHugh, Rep. Danny K. Davis, the 

Chairman of the USPS Board of Governors, the Postmaster General, the

Chairman of the Postal Rate Commission, the USPS Inspector General, 

and other interested parties. We also will provide copies to others on 

request. In addition, the report will be available at no charge on the GAO 

Web site at http://www.gao.gov. 

 35USPS Office of the Inspector General, External First-Class Measurement System, report 

number DS-AR-00-001 (Arlington, VA: Mar. 27, 2000).

Page 49 GAO-06-733 USPS Delivery Performance Information
If you or your staff have any questions regarding this report, please 

contact me at siggerudk@gao.gov or by telephone at (202) 512-2834. 

Contact points for our Offices of Congressional Relations and Public 

Affairs may be found on the last page of this report. GAO staff who made 

key contributions to this report are listed in appendix IV. 

Katherine A. Siggerud 

Director, Physical Infrastructure Issues 

Page 50 GAO-06-733 USPS Delivery Performance Information
Appendix I: Objectives, Scope, and Appendix I: Objectives, Scope, and Methodology 

Methodology 

Our objectives were to assess (1) the delivery standards for the timely 

delivery of mail that the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) has established, (2) the 

delivery performance information on the timely delivery of mail that USPS

measures and reports, and (3) the progress USPS has made in improving 

its delivery performance information. 

We based our assessment of USPS’s delivery standards, measures, and 

reporting using the concepts of completeness, transparency, and 

usefulness of delivery standards, measures, and reporting (see table 6). We 

identified applicable laws related to USPS’s mission, ratemaking, and 

reporting; statutes and practices used by high-performing organizations 

related to delivery standards, measurement, and reporting, including 

practices identified through our past work. The basis of our assessment is

described in greater detail in table 6.

Page 51 GAO-06-733 USPS Delivery Performance Information
Appendix I: Objectives, Scope, and 

Methodology 

Table 6: Basis for GAO Assessment of USPS Delivery Standards, Measurement, and Reporting 

Assessment criteria Basis for criteria 

Completeness

Completeness of delivery performance 

information provided internally and 

externally so that USPS and other 

stakeholders understand how well USPS 

is fulfilling its statutory mission and 

specific statutory requirements for mail 

delivery. 

Statutory criteria

• USPS has as its basic function the obligation to provide postal services to bind the nation

together through the personal, educational, literary, and business correspondence of the 

people. It shall provide prompt, reliable, and efficient services to patrons in all areas and

shall render postal services to all communities.

a

• USPS must provide a maximum degree of effective and regular postal services to rural 

areas, communities, and small towns where post offices are not self-sustaining.b

• In selecting modes of transportation, USPS must give the highest consideration to the 

prompt and economical delivery of all mail.c

• USPS must give the highest consideration to the expeditious collection, transportation, 

and delivery of important letter mail.d

• Modern methods of transporting the mail by containerization and programs designed to 

achieve overnight transportation to the destination of important letter mail to all parts of 

the nation shall be a primary goal of postal operations.e

• USPS operations include delivering mail with different standards for speed of delivery, 

which addresses the requirement that USPS provide types of mail service to meet the 

needs of different categories of mail and mail users.f

 Varying types of mail have been 

established in accordance with the importance of establishing classifications with—and 

without—extremely high degrees of reliability and speed of delivery.g

GAO postal-related work

• Without complete and reliable performance data, USPS and other stakeholders cannot 

determine USPS’s progress towards meeting its intended performance results.h

• The Government Performance and Results Act of 1993 (GPRA) requires USPS to 

prepare strategic plans and annual performance plans, which are to include performance 

goals related to its mission, and are to be similar to those developed by executive branch 

agencies.i

Practices used by high-performing organizations

• Key attributes of successful performance measures include, among other things, (1) core

program activities, so that measures cover the activities that an entity is expected to 

perform to support the intent of the program and (2) balance, which exists when a suite 

of measures ensures that an organization’s various priorities are covered.j

• According to the American Productivity and Quality Center (APQC), best-practice 

companies are using performance measurement results to identify areas for 

improvement and consider the application of performance measurement data to be their

competitive advantage. The ultimate purpose of performance measurement is the 

compilation and analysis of strategically aligned data from which decision makers and 

teams can make decisions and implement actions to improve business performance and 

achieve strategic objectives. These companies view the analysis of performance data, 

and the subsequent use of these data in changing processes, as what gives them a 

competitive edge.k

Page 52 GAO-06-733 USPS Delivery Performance Information
Appendix I: Objectives, Scope, and 

Methodology 

Assessment criteria Basis for criteria 

Transparency

Availability of transparent information on

delivery performance internally and 

externally, including to USPS managers 

and employees, the USPS Board of 

Governors, mailers, PRC, Congress, 

and the public.

Statutory criteria

• USPS is required to annually report data on the speed and reliability of service provided

for the various classes of mail and types of mail services to its congressional oversight 

committees.l

• GPRA requires USPS to annually report to Congress and the public on its goals and 

actual performance relative to these goals.m

USPS is required to review the success of 

achieving its goals, and, for any goals not met, explain and describe (1) why the goal 

was not met, (2) plans and schedules for achieving the established goal, or, if the 

performance goal is impractical or infeasible, (3) why that is the case and what action is 

recommended. USPS may report any proprietary goals to Congress in a non-public 

annex.n

GAO postal-related work

• USPS is a governmental entity with a monopoly to deliver letter mailo and has a vital role

in communications and commerce; thus, the transparency of its delivery performance 

information is important to assessing how well it is achieving its basic mission.p

• Given the vital role of the nation’s postal system, it is imperative that USPS, its 

stakeholders, and the public have adequate information available to them to assess 

USPS’s progress toward meeting its performance goals and future plans.q

Practices used by high-performing organizations

• The demand for transparency and accountability is a fact that needs to be accepted in

any public sector transformation.r

Usefulness

Usefulness of information on delivery 

performance to enable effective 

oversight, and accountability— including 

by USPS managers, the USPS Board of 

Governors, PRC, and the Congress—as 

well as effective USPS performance. 

Statutory

• USPS Board of Governors: The Board is required to direct the exercise of the power of 

USPS, including directing and controlling USPS expenditures and reviewing its policies 

and practices. Governors are required to be chosen to represent the public interest 

generally.s

Postal Rate Commission (PRC): When considering USPS proposals to change postal rates 

and fees, PRC is required to consider the value of mail service actually provided for each 

class of mail,t which PRC has interpreted to include actual results for timely mail deliveryu

When considering changes to mail classification, which USPS or PRC can initiate, PRC is 

required to consider the importance of providing classifications with and without high 

degrees of reliability and speed of delivery.v

 When USPS proposes changes that will have a 

nationwide or substantially nationwide effect on service, PRC is required to review the 

proposals and render an advisory opinion.w

 When interested parties believe that they are 

not receiving postal services in accordance with the policies of Title 39, they may lodge a

complaint with PRC. If PRC considers a complaint regarding delivery service to be justified, 

it is required to issue a public report to USPS that is advisory.x

Page 53 GAO-06-733 USPS Delivery Performance Information
Appendix I: Objectives, Scope, and 

Methodology 

Assessment criteria Basis for criteria 

• Congress: USPS is required to annually report information to its congressional oversight 

committees, including data on the speed and reliability of service provided for the various 

classes of mail, trends in postal operations, and analyses of the impact of various 

internal and external factors on USPS. USPS is also required to annually submit such 

information as the committees may determine necessary to ensure that Congress is fully 

and currently consulted on postal operations, plans, and policies.l

GAO postal-related work

• Timely, accurate, and relevant performance data will be critical for effective management 

as well as communications with customers, Congress, and other stakeholders.h

Practices used by high-performing organizations

• For planning and performance measurement to be effective, federal managers need to 

use performance information to identify performance problems and look for solutions, 

develop approaches that improve results, and make other important management 

decisions.y

• The benefit of collecting performance information is only fully realized when this 

information is actually used by managers to make decisions oriented toward improving 

results. Performance information can be used to identify problems and take corrective 

action; develop strategy and allocate resources; recognize and reward performance; and 

identify and share effective approaches. Practices that can contribute to greater use of 

performance information include demonstrating management commitment; aligning 

agencywide goals, objectives, and measures; improving the usefulness of performance 

information; developing the capacity to use performance information; and communicating

performance information clearly and effectively.y

• A major use, if not the major use, of regularly collected outcome information should be 

by program managers themselves to improve the effectiveness of their programs.z

• High-performing organizations often must fundamentally change their cultures so that 

they are more results oriented, customer focused, and collaborative in nature.bb These 

organizations use effective performance management systems as a strategic tool to 

drive change and achieve desired results. Among the key practices used is to align 

individual performance expectations with organizational goals

bb by seeking to create pay, 

incentive, and reward systems that clearly link employee knowledge, skills, and 

contributions to organizational results.cc

• In defining and articulating a common outcome, where appropriate, federal agencies 

should involve nonfederal partners, key clients, and stakeholders. In doing so, federal 

agencies can better address their interests and expectations and gain their support in 

achieving the objectives of the collaboration. The ability to work collaboratively requires 

mutual trust among the respective parties—a shared belief that the partners will carry out 

their part of the joint agreement.aa

Source: Criteria developed by GAO based on laws, practices used by high-performing organizations, and past GAO work. 

a

39 U.S.C. §101(a). 

b

39 U.S.C. §101(b). 

c

39 U.S.C. §101(f). 

d

39 U.S.C. §101(e). 

e

39 U.S.C. §101(f). 

f

39 U.S.C. §403(b)(2). 

Page 54 GAO-06-733 USPS Delivery Performance Information
Appendix I: Objectives, Scope, and 

Methodology 

g

Types of domestic mail are established in the Domestic Mail Classification Schedule, which is 

incorporated into the PRC subpart of the Code of Federal Regulations (Appendix A to Subpart C of 

39 C.F.R. Part 3001, following 39 C.F.R. §3001.68). Statutory guidance for domestic mail 

classification is specified in 39 U.S.C. §3623. 

h

GAO, Major Management Challenges and Program Risks: U.S. Postal Service, GAO-01-262 

(Washington, D.C.: Jan. 2001). 

i

GAO, The Results Act: Observations on the Postal Service’s Preliminary Annual Performance Plan, 

GAO/GGD-98-144 (Washington, D.C.: July 10, 1998). 

j

GAO, Tax Administration: IRS Needs to Further Refine Its Tax Filing Season Performance Measures, 

GAO-03-143 (Washington, D.C.: Nov. 22, 2002). 

k

APQC, Achieving Organizational Excellence Through the Performance Measurement System: 

Consortium Benchmarking Study: Best Practice Report (Houston, Texas: 1999). 

l

39 U.S.C. §2401(e). 

m

39 U.S.C. §2803-2804. 

n

39 U.S.C. §2803(d). 

o

Laws restricting private delivery of letters include 39 U.S.C. §601-606 and 18 U.S.C. §1693-1699. 

p

GAO, U.S. Postal Service: Key Elements of Comprehensive Postal Reform, GAO-04-397T 

(Washington, D.C.: Jan. 28, 2004), U.S. Postal Service: Bold Action Needed to Continue Progress on

Postal Transformation, GAO-04-108T (Washington, D.C.: Nov. 5, 2003); Major Management 

Challenges and Program Risks: U.S. Postal Service, GAO-03-118 (Washington, D.C.: Jan. 2003). 

q

GAO-03-118. 

r

GAO, Results-Oriented Cultures: Implementation Steps to Assist Mergers and Organizational 

Transformation, GAO-03-669 (Washington, D.C.: July 2, 2003). 

s

39 U.S.C. §202(a) and §205(a). 

t

39 U.S.C. §3622(b)(2). 

u

PRC, Presiding Officer’s Ruling No. R2000-1/51, Docket No. R2000-1 (Washington, D.C.: Apr. 26, 

2000). 

v

39 U.S.C. §3623. 

w

39 U.S.C. §3661. 

x

39 U.S.C. §3662. 

y

GAO, Managing for Results: Enhancing Agency Use of Performance Information for DecisionMaking, GAO-05-927 (Washington, D.C.: Sept. 9, 2005). 

z

National Academy of Public Administration and IBM Endowment for the Business of Government, 

How Federal Programs Use Outcome Information: Opportunities for Federal Managers (Washington, 

D.C.: May 2003).

aaGAO, Results-Oriented Government: Practices That Can Help Enhance and Sustain Collaboration 

among Federal Agencies, GAO-06-15 (Washington, D.C.: Oct. 21, 2005). 

bbGAO, Results-Oriented Cultures: Creating a Clear Linkage between Individual Performance and 

Organizational Success, GAO-03-488 (Washington, D.C.: Mar. 14, 2003). 

ccGAO, Human Capital: Observations on Final Regulations for DOD’s National Security Personnel 

System, GAO-06-227T (Washington, D.C.: Nov. 17, 2005). 

Page 55 GAO-06-733 USPS Delivery Performance Information
Appendix I: Objectives, Scope, and 

Methodology 

To address the first objective, assessing delivery standards USPS has 

established, we obtained information from USPS on its delivery standards 

for the timely delivery of mail. Information consisted of USPS’s narrative 

description of its standards; documentation of its standards included in 

the Domestic Mail Manual and related policies included in the Postal 

Operations Manual; and written responses provided to us by USPS. We 

also obtained material on delivery standards that USPS provided in Postal 

Rate Commission (PRC) proceedings and that were posted to the PRC 

Web site. These proceedings included postal rate cases and “nature of 

service” proceedings that considered the USPS proposals expected to have 

an effect on the nature of postal services on a nationwide or substantially 

nationwide basis. We reviewed publicly available material that USPS 

reported on its delivery standards, which was posted on the USPS Web 

site, including the section of the USPS Web site devoted to the Mailers’ 

Technical Advisory Committee (MTAC). Our assessment of USPS’s 

delivery standards was also informed by the views of mailing 

organizations, mailers, PRC, and PRC’s Office of the Consumer Advocate

(OCA), which is charged with representing the interests of the general 

public and the views of other postal stakeholders. Some of these views 

were provided in written material issued by the stakeholders, including 

material provided directly to us, material provided in PRC proceedings, 

and articles in the trade press. Other views were provided to us in 

interviews we conducted with these organizations. 

To address the second objective, delivery performance information USPS 

measures and reports, we obtained documentation and related written 

material on USPS’s delivery performance measurement systems, which 

included the External First-Class Measurement System (EXFC), the 

Product Tracking System (PTS), the now-discontinued Priority End-to-End 

System (PETE), and other measurement systems for international mail. 

We obtained documentation on the data collection procedures and 

internal controls for these systems and obtained detailed explanations of 

these systems in interviews with USPS officials. In addition, we obtained

publicly available information on these systems from USPS reports, 

material that USPS provided PRC in past rate cases, and published articles

about these systems. We conducted a limited data reliability assessment of 

EXFC, PTS, and PETE. Our assessment was informed by obtaining the 

views of USPS officials, mailing groups, mailers, and other stakeholders, 

both in writing and in interviews. 

To address the third objective, assessing the progress USPS has made in 

improving its delivery performance information, we obtained information 

from a variety of sources on the progress USPS has made and its 

Page 56 GAO-06-733 USPS Delivery Performance Information
Appendix I: Objectives, Scope, and 

Methodology 

opportunities for improving delivery performance information. We 

obtained information on the history of studies that recommended USPS 

improve its delivery standards, measurement, and/or reporting. These 

studies included joint USPS-mailer committees, some of which were ad 

hoc efforts and some of which were sponsored by MTAC. Information on 

these studies included written reports by the committees, documentation 

on these groups provided to us by USPS and mailers, and interviews of 

USPS, mailer committees, and mailers. More generally, we obtained the

views of USPS officials, mailing groups, mailers, and other stakeholders on 

USPS’s progress and remaining opportunities in this area, both in writing 

and in interviews. 

We requested comments on a draft of this report from USPS; these are 

reproduced in appendix III. We conducted our review from August 2005 to

July 2006 in accordance with generally accepted government auditing 

standards. 

Page 57 GAO-06-733 USPS Delivery Performance Information
Appendix II: USPS Delivery Standards 

Table 7: USPS Delivery Standards by Class and Type of Mail 

Type of mail 

Number of 

daysa

 Explanation of delivery standards and available information

Standard Mail 3 to 10 days to

all valid ZIP 

Codes 

These standards have not been systemically changed since their inception in the 1970s. 

As an “approximate overview,” the number of days is loosely based on the number of 

postal zones that mail must travel, which in turn are loosely based on a mileage radius to 

the destinating Sectional Center Facility (SCF).b

Usually, 3 days for mail within the same SCF, depending on the size of the Intra-SCF

area. All other non-Intra-SCF destinations are 4 days or greater. 

While the 3- to 10- day range outlines the official USPS standards, USPS sometimes does

have independent “programs,” or “guidelines,” outside of the Service Standards, which 

attempt to facilitate the delivery of Standard Mail (sometimes directly in concert with 

mailers). In some cases, these time frames are more ambitious or differ from the official 

Service Standards. 

For example, the Postal Operations Manual (POM)c

 specifies that 

• some Standard Mail is to be delivered 2 delivery days after it is entered into the postal 

system. This applies to mailer-prepared carrier-route presort mail that mailers dropship 

to delivery units (including post offices, branches, and stations) where letter carriers 

pick up their mail for delivery.d

• delivery units should make every effort to adhere to mailer-requested, in-home delivery 

dates. Mail should not be delivered earlier than the date the mailer has requested.e

 If 

delivery units receive Standard Mail with a mailer-requested delivery date later than the 

USPS-scheduled delivery day, the USPS-scheduled date should be changed to match 

the last requested in-home delivery date, to comply with the mailer’s request.f

 If delivery 

units receive Standard Mail with a mailer-requested delivery that has already been 

passed, the decision regarding delivery or disposition of this mail (including disposal 

without delivery) must be consistent with the current national policy on this subject.g

If Standard Mail is mixed with a higher class of mail (e.g., First-Class Mail) in USPS’s mail

processing system in such a manner as it loses its identity, it must be considered

upgraded and treated as the higher class of mail.h

 Technically, such commingled items do

not become the higher mail class. However, USPS enacts this policy in order to not slow 

down the ultimate delivery of such pieces by not requiring that they be re-isolated and 

“extracted” from the higher mail class and subsequently re-entered with their “correct” mail 

class, a process which could possibly slow down delivery and provide worse service than

was originally intended (although the re-segregation of such commingled mail, by mail 

class, is always an option, if operationally feasible). 

There are no prohibitions against making USPS management agreements below the 

national level, which accelerate the delivery expectations for any Standard Mail versus 

national policy.i

Appendix II: USPS Delivery Standards 

Page 58 GAO-06-733 USPS Delivery Performance Information
Appendix II: USPS Delivery Standards 

Type of mail 

Number of 

daysa

 Explanation of delivery standards and available information

Periodicals 1 to 7 days to all 

valid ZIP Codes

Delivery standards are 3-digit-to-3-digit ZIP Code based. Periodicals mail is a 

“preferential” product that travels normally by surface to all valid ZIP Codes. The standard 

range of 1 to 7 days is loosely equivalent to the eight Postal Zones (which are also based 

on a Mileage Radius), minus 1, as shown in Table 8.j

In accordance with policies adopted in 1990 after the conclusion of a PRC proceeding that 

began in 1989,

k

 the 1-day delivery area should normally be adjusted to be the same as 

the overnight area for First-Class Mail, with exceptions subject to regional and 

headquarters concurrence. 

2 to 3 day standards can be as fast as First-Class Mail but are not usually intended to be

faster. Nearly all of the Service Standard pairs meet this “Mail Class Hierarchy” guideline.

The concept for these standards has not changed since the 1980s. Newly activated ZIP 

Codes (or ZIP Code areas that have been revised due to an Area Mail Processing Plan

implementation) are “cloned” to have the same Periodical delivery standards as the other 

originating or destinating ZIPs served out of the same processing plant. 

Package Services 

Includes Parcel Post 

(except Parcel Select), 

Bound Printed Matter, 

Media Mail, and Library 

Mail 

2 to 9 days to 

most ZIP Codes 

2 to 9 days to all valid ZIP Codes within the contiguous 48 states. 

There are no established Package Services delivery standards to Alaska, Hawaii, or 

offshore destinations (e.g., Guam, Puerto Rico, Virgin Islands).j

The delivery standards are 3-digit-to-3-digit ZIP Code based. Package Services mail is a

product that travels normally by surface to all ZIP Codes. The standards are therefore 

predicated on the Bulk Mail Center (BMC) network. Normally, the standards would change 

only if the Area Mail Processing (AMP) Plan resulted in the origin or destination ZIP Code 

moving to within a new BMC area because the gaining facility was located in a different 

BMC area than the previous facility. The concept for Package Services service standards

has remained constant since the 1970s. Newly activated ZIP Codes (or revised ZIP 

Codes areas due to an AMP Plan implementation) are “cloned” to have the same 

Package Services service standards as the other originating or destinating ZIPs served 

out of the same BMC or Auxillary Service Facility. 

Parcel Select 1 to 3 days Parcel Select comprises Parcel Post items that are mailed in bulk quantities; are entered

by mailers at USPS facilities, including Destination Bulk Mail Centers (DBMCs), 

Destination Sectional Center Facilities (DSCFs), or Destination Delivery Units (DDUs); 

and meet other rules for mail preparation and entry. The delivery standards include: 

• 1 day for DDU entry by 4 p.m. 

• 2 days for DSCF entry by 3 p.m. 

• 2 to 3 days (generally 2 days) for DBMC entry by 3 p.m. 

2-day versus 3-day for DBMC entry is based on the Parcel Post standard for the 3-digit 

ZIP where the DBMC is physically located and the destination 3-digit ZIP of the parcel. 

These standards were determined as part of the Parcel Select product creation. Originally, 

all BMC entry was 3-day. This change to most 2-day was made in 2002.j 

Page 59 GAO-06-733 USPS Delivery Performance Information
Appendix II: USPS Delivery Standards 

Type of mail 

Number of 

daysa

 Explanation of delivery standards and available information

Priority Mail 1 to 3 days Delivery standards have existed for Priority Mail since its inception, when it essentially 

replaced Air Mail in the late 1970s. The standards currently range from 1 to 3 days to all 

valid ZIP Codes. However, Priority Mail is primarily a product that is targeted for delivery 

within 2 days. (Over 93 percent of Priority ZIP Code pairs currently have either a 1-day or

2-day standard.) These standards are determined on a case-by-case basis, depending on

processing times and available transportation. Priority Mail service standards are usually 

equal to, or faster than, First-Class Mail standards to/from the same domestic ZIP Code 

pairs.j

Newly activated ZIP Codes (or revised ZIP Codes areas due to an Area Mail Processing

Plan implementation) are cloned to have the same Priority Service standards as the other

originating or destinating ZIPs served out of the same processing plant. 

First-Class Mail 1 to 3 days First-Class Mail other than Priority Mail: 1 to 3 days, depending on the 3-digit ZIP Code of

acceptance and the destination address. Standards do not vary by shape, size, or weight.j

The same standard applies to all mail originating or destinating in the same 3-digit ZIP 

Code area. 

USPS policies for First-Class Mail Service Standards are as follows: 

1-day (Overnight) Delivery Standard: Overnight delivery standards must include all of the 

intra-SCF area. Other areas may be considered for overnight delivery if significant 

business/mail volume relationships exist and they are within the reasonable reach of 

surface transportation. 

2-Day Delivery Standard: Two-day delivery standards must include all areas that currently

have an overnight standard but will not, as proposed, be in the new overnight area. Twoday delivery standards must also include all SCFs with the home state and nearby states 

that are within the reasonable reach of surface transportation (as defined by the USPS 

Office of Transportation and International Services). In addition, 2-day delivery standards 

may include other 3-digit areas outside of the reach of surface transportation if significant

business/mail volume relationships exist and if dependable and timely air transportation is

available.l

3-Day Delivery Standard: Three-day delivery standards should include all remaining 

destinations. 

Service standard changes reflecting the new overnight definition were implemented in

1990 to 1992. In 2000 to 2001, in order to increase the 2-day reach but make it achievable 

at a consistently appropriate level, USPS expanded the 2-day reach to include nonovernight offices that were as far away as a 12-hour drive from the originating “parent” 

Processing and Distribution Center (P&DC) to the destinating Area Distribution Center 

(ADC) via surface transportation. 

At the same time, the USPS determined that the existing commercial air transportation 

network had deteriorated and had become too unreliable for maintaining the 2-day service 

standard for First-Class Mail beyond the reasonable reach of surface transportation. 

Accordingly, USPS changed the service standards for this mail from 2 days to 3 days. 

Although this deterioration and resulting unreliability of commercial air service made it 

infeasible for USPS to continue to apply the 2-day standard to destinations beyond the 

reasonable reach of surface transportation, the overall number of origin-destination pairs 

with 2-day standards increased in 2000-01 because of the adoption of the 12-hour drive 

time definition. 

Page 60 GAO-06-733 USPS Delivery Performance Information
Appendix II: USPS Delivery Standards 

Type of mail 

Number of 

daysa

 Explanation of delivery standards and available information

Express Mail 1 to 2 days to 

designated

locationsm 

Overnight and second-day service to designated areas and post offices, supported by a 

money-back guarantee.m

• Next-day Service provides overnight service to designated 3-digit and 5-digit ZIP Code 

delivery areas, facilities, or locations,n

 based on the time of acceptance and available 

service-response air and surface transportation. 

• Second-day Service is offered for areas not on the next-day network, including any 3-

digit or 5-digit ZIP Code destination not listed in the Express Mail Next Day Service 

directory, but may not be available at or between all post offices or at all times of 

deposit.o

 

• Second Delivery Day is not a distinct service but applies to mailings to those ZIP Codes 

where postal delivery is not provided on Sundays or federal holidays, and delivery is 

guaranteed on the next regular delivery day. This typically applies only to mailings 

made on Friday to a destination that lacks Sunday/holiday delivery. In that case, the 

piece is guaranteed for delivery on the next regular delivery day, which is a Monday, or 

Tuesday if Monday is a federal holiday.p

Unlike most other types of mail, Express Mail service may involve delivery on Sundays.q

At the point of sale, each customer is notified of the specific service standard for the 

mailed item. This standard is based on information in an electronic and/or hardcopy 

directory containing detailed information about local and destination ZIP Code acceptance 

and delivery capabilities. The clerk who accepts the mail annotates the customer receipt 

to indicate whether the mailed item was accepted for next- or second-day delivery. 

Further, customers can obtain the guaranteed delivery commitments for some individual 

pieces of mail through the USPS Web site by entering their originating and destinating 5-

digit ZIP Codes. 

International Mail 2 days to 6 

weeksr

USPS and its overseas delivery partners establish delivery standards in conjunction with 

international organizations including the Universal Postal Union and the International Post 

Corporation. 

International Express 

Mail 

2 to 5 days Global Express Mail Guaranteed: 2 to 3 days with date-certain shipping to over 200 

countries. 

Global Express Mail: 3 to 5 days to over 190 countries with date-certain shipping to 

selected countries. 

Global Priority Mail 4 to 6 days Global Priority Mail includes single-piece mail under 4 pounds sent from the United States 

to over 50 countries. 

International Priority Air 

Mail 

4 to 7 days International Priority Air Mail includes mailings of items under 4 pounds, virtually 

worldwide, sent in bulk quantities at lower rates than Global Priority Mail. 

International letterclass mail (singlepiece) 4 days to 6 

weeks 

Global Air Mail letters: 4 to 7 days, including 5 days to Europe; 4 days to Canada; and 1 to 

3 days for transit within the United States. Global Economy Mail letters: 4 to 6 weeks. 

International parcels 4 to 6 weeks Global Air Mail parcels: 4 to 10 days to virtually all countries. 

Global Economy Mail parcels: 4 to 6 weeks. 

International Business 

Reply Service 

4 to 7 days Prepaid business reply postcards and letters to virtually all countries. 

Source: USPS. 

a

The number of delivery days after acceptance of the mail, which generally does not include Sundays 

or holidays. 

Page 61 GAO-06-733 USPS Delivery Performance Information
Appendix II: USPS Delivery Standards 

b

USPS, Direct Testimony of Pranab M. Shah on Behalf of the United States Postal Service, USPS-T1, PRC Docket N2006-1 (Washington, D.C.: Feb. 14, 2006). See Table 8 for more detail. 

c

The Postal Operations Manual (POM) is incorporated in its entirety into the Code of Federal 

Regulations, but is not available on the USPS Web site. 

d

POM 458.341d.

e

POM 458.2h. 

f

POM 458.341f. 

g

POM 458.341h. Also see USPS, Postal Bulletin 22110, p. 19 (Washington, D.C.: Sept. 4, 2003), 

Postal Bulletin 22045, p. 18 (Washington, D.C.: Mar. 8, 2001). 

h

POM 458.2b. 

i

POM 458.2e. 

j

USPS-T-1, PRC Docket N2006-1. 

k

PRC Docket No. N89-1. 

l

USPS policies call for consideration of 2-day standards (as opposed to 3-day standards) in some 

circumstances, such as when mail flows reach specified thresholds. For example, 2-day standards 

are to be considered when a destinating mail processing facility called an Area Distribution Center 

receives more than 0.5 percent of its incoming mail volume from an originating mail processing 

facility.

m

The Domestic Mail Manual (DMM) 113.4, http://pe.usps.com/text/dmm300/113.htm. (The entire 

DMM is incorporated by reference into the Code of Federal Regulations.) See USPS Quick Service 

Guide 110, Express Mail, http://pe.usps.gov/cpim/ftp/manuals/qsg300/q110.pdf, for a summary. 

n

DMM 113.4.1.1, http://pe.usps.com/text/dmm300/113.htm, and POM 674. 

o

DMM 113.4.3.1, http://pe.usps.com/text/dmm300/113.htm, POM 675. 

p

More detailed information is available at http://www.usps.com/serviceperformance/dayofmailing.htm. 

q

POM 126.43. 

r

http://www.usps.com/global/sendpackages.htm and http://www.usps.com/global/sendmail.htm. 

Page 62 GAO-06-733 USPS Delivery Performance Information
Appendix II: USPS Delivery Standards 

Table 8: USPS’s Approximate Overview of the Service Standard Ranges for 

Standard Mail and Periodicals (not specifically required) 

Approximate standard

(Days) 

Number of zones 

from origin to 

destination Distance 

Standard

Mail Periodicals

1 Non local zones within 50 miles radius 3a1b

2 50 to 150 mile radius 4 1b

3 150 to 300 mile radius 5 2b

4 300 to 600 mile radius 6 3b

5 600 to 1,000 mile radius 7 4

6 1,000 to 1,400 mile radius 8 5

7 1,400 to 1,800 mile radius 9 6

8 1,800 miles and over 10 7

Source: USPS. 

Note: USPS divides the United States into eight zones. The approximate delivery standard for 

Standard Mail is equal to the number of postal zones from origin (i.e., where the mail is accepted by

USPS) to destination (i.e., where the mail is delivered), plus 2 days. The approximate delivery

standard for Periodicals that traverse at least two postal zones is equal to the number of zones from 

origin to destination, minus 1 day. The specific delivery standards are defined for each combination of 

origin and destination 3-digit ZIP Codes and may differ from the approximate overview in this table. 

a

Usually, ZIP Codes within the same Sectional Center Facility (SCF) are targeted for 3 days.

Depending on the size of the Intra-SCF area, all other Non-Intra-SCF destinations are 4 days or

greater. 

b

This can be equal to First-Class Mail delivery standards between ZIP Code Pairs, but is not intended 

to ever be faster.

Page 63 GAO-06-733 USPS Delivery Performance Information
Appendix III: Comments from the U.S. Postal Service Appendix III: Comments from the U.S. Postal 

Service 

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Appendix IV: GAO Contact and Staff 

Acknowledgments 

Katherine Siggerud (202) 512-2834 

In addition to the individual named above, Teresa Anderson, Cynthia 

Daffron, Tamera L. Dorland, Kathy Gilhooly, Brandon Haller, Kenneth E. 

John, Catherine S. Kim, Karen O’Conor, Jacqueline M. Nowicki, and Edda 

Emmanuelli-Perez made key contributions to this report. 

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GAO Contact 

Staff 

Acknowledgments 

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