Leading Practices: Mail Consolidation

Leading Practices are ideas that are systematically collected and then strategically disseminated and measured for their impact on government. Leading Practices are something that that is encouraged, not directed at people. If a mail facility has a leading practice, GSA want to know.

CONSOLIDATING MAIL: The Department of Navy and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)

History

Consolidating mail is the practice of combining the outgoing mail from a variety of activities. This has long been identified as a way to obtain postage discounts and, at the same time, make outgoing more effective and efficient in other ways.

The leading federal example of effective consolidating is the U.S. Navy, which is consolidating mail for a variety of DoD and civilian agencies at several locations including Washington DC, San Diego, and Pearl Harbor.

Several of the federal Cooperative Administrative Service Units (CASUs) and federal franchise activities are also consolidating mail.

GSA is promoting use of consolidation through our website, regular meetings of the Interagency Mail Policy Council (IMPC), and meetings with specific agencies who ask for assistance.

Utility

Most federal locations do not have sufficient outgoing mail to obtain postage discounts. More importantly, these smaller federal mail centers are usually given little management attention or support; the result is outgoing mail that is often poorly addressed and not conducive to automated processing by the Postal Service, which creates a significant risk of slow and uncertain delivery.

Consolidating mail, therefore, reduces postage expenses and makes it much more likely that outgoing federal mail will be delivered correctly and quickly.

Impact

All Navy activities in the Washington DC area are now consolidating their mail at one facility. The same facility is also now handling all outgoing mail for the Pentagon and many other DoD activities, USDA, and the Presidential Transition. They are in discussions with the Department of State.

USDA recently presented their results to the IMPC, showing that they saved money and significantly enhanced the mailing practices of USDA's employees in the Washington area.