U.S. Postal Service: Better Incorporating Leading Practices for Project Management Could Benefit Strategic Plan Implementation [Reissued with revisions on Sept. 19, 2023]
Fast Facts
The U.S. Postal Service has been on our High Risk List since 2009 due to ongoing financial woes. To help address its financial condition, and improve service, USPS developed a 10-year strategic plan that touches on all parts of its operations.
USPS is implementing its ambitious plan through more than 100 ongoing projects. We reviewed USPS implementation policies to see how well they incorporated GAO leading practices for project management.
We found that USPS could better incorporate leading practices in 5 areas—like capturing lessons learned. We recommended USPS follow these practices to successfully implement its strategic plan.
Revised September 19, 2023, to correct the following pages. On the Highlights, and on page 22, the words “polices” were replaced with “policies.” On page 3, the following sentence was added to footnote 7: PMBOK is a trademark of Project Management Institute, Inc. On pages 6 and 10, text was edited to reflect that the Postal Regulatory Commission reviews and approves postal price changes.
Highlights
What GAO Found
In March 2021, the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) published a new 10-year strategic plan called Delivering for America with the primary goals of improving its service performance and financial sustainability. Since implementation of this Strategic Plan started, USPS has reported improved service reliability and some progress towards its financial targets. For example, USPS reported that it had met the fiscal year 2022 on-time delivery performance target of 91 percent for First-Class Mail, an improvement over the previous year's 83 percent. This improvement is, in part, due to changes that USPS adopted in October 2021 to adjust the performance targets and service standards for First-Class Mail and First-Class Packages. USPS also reported in April 2023 that its projected losses decreased by more than half—from $160 billion to $70 billion—in the first two years of the Strategic Plan's implementation.
USPS's policies for implementing Strategic Plan projects fully or substantially met six of 11 selected GAO leading practices for project management. However, GAO found that USPS's implementation policies partially or minimally met five leading practices (see figure).
GAO's Assessment of U.S. Postal Service (USPS) Policies against Leading Practices
For example, GAO found that although USPS collects information that could be relevant to a lessons-learned process, it does not have a system to identify or disseminate such information. Given that USPS plans to implement over 100 projects in the coming years, it is especially important to collect and disseminate lessons learned to benefit future projects. By further incorporating leading practices into its policies and guidance, USPS could better realize benefits for its current and future strategic plan projects.
Why GAO Did This Study
USPS has long faced challenges meeting its universal postal service mission, and its financial viability has been an ongoing area of concern. The changes proposed in USPS's 2021 Strategic Plan touch every aspect of USPS operations. USPS's success in achieving its goals depend, in part, on how well the plan is implemented.
GAO was asked to review USPS's implementation of its Strategic Plan. This report examines the progress USPS has made towards meeting the plan's primary goals and the extent to which USPS policies for implementing Strategic Plan projects incorporate GAO leading practices for project management, among other objectives.
GAO reviewed the Strategic Plan and additional USPS reports and policy documents. GAO assessed USPS policies governing Strategic Plan projects against 11 selected GAO leading practices for project management. In addition, GAO interviewed USPS officials and postal stakeholders about the Strategic Plan and its implementation.
Reissued with revisions on Sept. 19, 2023
Revised September 19, 2023, to correct the following pages. On the Highlights, and on page 22, the words “polices” were replaced with “policies.” On page 3, the following sentence was added to footnote 7: PMBOK is a trademark of Project Management Institute, Inc. On pages 6 and 10, text was edited to reflect that the Postal Regulatory Commission reviews and approves postal price changes.Recommendations
GAO is making six recommendations, including that USPS revise its Strategic Plan project implementation guidance to incorporate five project management leading practices, including identifying and disseminating lessons learned. USPS agreed with four of the six recommendations, and partially agreed with the other two recommendations. GAO maintains that fully implementing all of the recommendations will benefit USPS's implementation of its Strategic Plan.
Recommendations for Executive Action
| Agency Affected | Recommendation | Status |
|---|---|---|
| United States Postal Service | The Postmaster General should direct the Office of Strategic Planning to ensure that the policies and guidance—such as the Strategic Initiative Governance Controls document—used to implement Strategic Plan projects determine when a project requires an integrated master schedule and require that such a project's team develop and maintain an integrated master schedule for the entire life of the project. (Recommendation 1) |
As of May 2024, USPS has updated the strategic plan Governance Controls to determine when a project requires an integrated master schedule. However, projects' integrated master schedule information are not required to be for the lifecycle of the project. Further, the decision on whether a project needs such a plan is up to Executive Leadership Team and there is not guidance or criteria on how the team makes these decisions. We will continue to monitor USPS's actions in response to this recommendation, including whether and how it will require projects to maintain integrated master schedules for the entire life of projects.
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| United States Postal Service | The Postmaster General should direct the Office of Strategic Planning to ensure that the policies and guidance—such as the Strategic Initiative Governance Controls document—used to implement Strategic Plan projects include guidance for project teams to integrate existing cost information in project charters or establish performance baselines for project costs and update those cost estimates throughout the life of projects. (Recommendation 2) |
As of May 2024, USPS tracks project schedules and project management information in a new system of record, the Management Analysis and Planning Tool (MAPT). On a case-by-case basis, as directed by the USPS Executive Leadership Team, the Office of Strategic Planning tracks capital cost commitments in MAPT. According to USPS, though, this tracking is redundant to the established Corporate Budget Tracking System. Further, there are no other project-related costs tracked in MAPT. We continue to believe that USPS should track project cost and performance information in the same system. Having at least some key project cost and performance information in the same place would enable management to better monitor projects.
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| United States Postal Service | The Postmaster General should direct the Office of Strategic Planning to ensure that the policies and guidance—such as the Strategic Initiative Governance Controls document—used to implement Strategic Plan projects provide guidance on when project teams are required to conduct a root cause analysis and develop corrective action plans to address variations in expected outcomes. (Recommendation 3) |
USPS has long faced challenges meeting its universal postal service mission and its financial viability has been on GAO's High-Risk List since 2009 due to USPS's poor financial condition. As part of its efforts to address these challenges, USPS and its Board of Governors published Delivering for America (Strategic Plan), a new 10-year strategic plan, in March 2021. The Strategic Plan outlines high-level strategies, such as operational changes and capital investments, that USPS projects will improve service performance and make it financially self-sufficient when fully implemented. USPS created the Strategic Initiative Governance Controls (Governance Controls) document to guide implementation of Strategic Plan projects. In 2023, GAO reported that USPS's policies for implementing Strategic Plan projects partially or minimally met five of 11 selected GAO leading practices for project management. For example, GAO found that USPS did not have guidance for when project teams should perform root cause analysis or how to record and track results from such an analysis. While USPS provides project leads with tools for conducting different types of root cause analyses, it is left to the project lead's discretion if and when to perform such an analysis. While USPS showed there was high-level documentation for cases where a root cause analysis was conducted, USPS was not able to provide documentation for how teams are to develop these root cause analyses or what root cause analysis tool they used because project teams are not required to maintain any detailed record of their root cause analysis. Without guidance for when root cause analysis is needed and how to track the results, project teams may not conduct a root cause analysis when they should. Therefore, GAO recommended that USPS ensure that the policies and guidance-such as the Strategic Initiative Governance Controls document-used to implement its Strategic Plan projects provide guidance on when project teams are required to conduct a root cause analysis and develop corrective action plans to address variations in expected outcomes. In 2024, USPS updated its Governance Controls documentation to clarify when project leads should conduct root cause analyses as well as the identification and resolution of corrective actions. As a result, projects that experience variances are more likely to identify the reasons for those variances via root cause analyses.
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| United States Postal Service | The Postmaster General should direct the Office of Strategic Planning to ensure that the policies and guidance—such as the Strategic Initiative Governance Controls document—used to implement Strategic Plan projects require that independent reviews resulting in activities as well as outcomes of corrective actions are clearly documented throughout the life of projects. (Recommendation 4) |
USPS has long faced challenges meeting its universal postal service mission and its financial viability has been on GAO's High-Risk List since 2009 due to USPS's poor financial condition. As part of its efforts to address these challenges, USPS and its Board of Governors published Delivering for America (Strategic Plan), a new 10-year strategic plan, in March 2021. The Strategic Plan outlines high-level strategies, such as operational changes and capital investments, that USPS projects will improve service performance and make it financially self-sufficient when fully implemented. USPS created the Strategic Initiative Governance Controls (Governance Controls) document to guide implementation of Strategic Plan projects. In 2023, GAO reported that USPS's policies for implementing Strategic Plan projects partially or minimally met five of 11 selected GAO leading practices for project management. For example, GAO found that, while USPS has an independent review system in place through its monitoring framework, it does not clearly record outcomes of the oversight actions. In particular, during performance review meetings, executive leadership might direct project leads to take action to address a performance issue, but USPS officials said they did not document the actions decided on in those meetings. USPS therefore could not track the outcomes of these actions or determine whether further actions are needed. Therefore, GAO recommended that USPS ensure that the policies and guidance-such as the Strategic Initiative Governance Controls document-used to implement its Strategic Plan projects require that independent reviews resulting in activities as well as outcomes of corrective actions are clearly documented throughout the life of projects. In 2024, USPS updated its Governance Controls documentation to ensure that its system of record store these corrective actions and track them through completion. With all aspects of independent reviews-including documenting corrective actions and outcomes-now in place, USPS decision makers will gather more insight into projects' potential costs and issues.
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| United States Postal Service | The Postmaster General should direct the Office of Strategic Planning to ensure that the policies and guidance—such as the Strategic Initiative Governance Controls document—used to implement Strategic Plan projects include guidance for project teams to review, identify, and disseminate lessons learned prior to, during, and after implementing projects. (Recommendation 5) |
As of May 2024, USPS has updated its Governance Controls in response to this recommendation and we are reviewing those changes.
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| United States Postal Service | The Postmaster General should direct the Office of Strategic Planning to amend the policies and guidance—such as the Strategic Initiative Governance Controls document—used to implement Strategic Plan projects to clarify what qualifies as an exception from the USPS policies used to implement Strategic Plan projects as well as the process for documenting the rationale for such exceptions. (Recommendation 6) |
USPS has long faced challenges meeting its universal postal service mission and its financial viability has been on GAO's High-Risk List since 2009 due to USPS's poor financial condition. As part of its efforts to address these challenges, USPS and its Board of Governors published Delivering for America (Strategic Plan), a new 10-year strategic plan, in March 2021. The Strategic Plan outlines high-level strategies, such as operational changes and capital investments, that USPS projects will improve service performance and make it financially self-sufficient when fully implemented. USPS created the Strategic Initiative Governance Controls (Governance Controls) document to guide implementation of Strategic Plan projects. In 2023, GAO reported that USPS's policies for implementing Strategic Plan projects partially or minimally met five of 11 selected GAO leading practices for project management. Additionally, GAO found that in some areas where USPS policy incorporated leading practices, USPS did not consistently document rationales for exceptions to following those policies for selected individual projects. USPS officials said that any inconsistencies GAO found with Strategic Plan implementation policies were attributable to purposeful decisions made by management due to the type and scope of the project. When GAO reviewed the project tracking system logs that would record changes for the selected Strategic Plan projects, GAO found that, while the logs contained changes to milestones and metrics, there was no record of any exceptions to the project plan policy for the two selected projects that did not have project plans. Moreover, GAO found that the written exceptions process does not include a definition of what qualifies as an exception to support USPS officials' assertion that decisions not to follow project planning requirements are variations and do not qualify as exceptions. Therefore, GAO recommended that USPS ensure that the policies and guidance-such as the Strategic Initiative Governance Controls document-used to implement its Strategic Plan projects clarify what qualifies as an exception from the USPS policies used to implement Strategic Plan projects as well as the process for documenting the rationale for such exceptions. In 2024, USPS updated its Governance Controls documentation to clarify what qualifies as an exception as well as the process for approving and documenting exceptions to its established governance guidelines. As a result, USPS is better positioned to identify lessons learned from projects that are granted exceptions as to how these exceptions affected the projects' objectives.
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