Summary: The Military Postal Service (MPS) was established to provide a means of delivering official and personal mail to and from military members assigned overseas. An assessment was made of MPS operations and avenues available to make it more efficient, cost effective, and responsive to user needs. Congress has recently expressed an interest in the matter and a Subcommittee has made several recommendations for improvement.
Most of the problems identified by the Subcommittee still exist and the recommended actions have not been taken. Means which could be taken to improve MPS operations include: using the least costly transportation for low priority parcels from overseas to the United States, establishing mail service standards and a measurement system to assess the quality of mail service, and improving audit and security oversight of overseas operations. GAO estimated that during fiscal year 1978 the Department of Defense (DOD) could have saved $14 million if low priority parcels had been diverted from airlift to sealift. It was found that the delay by DOD in establishing a single service management agency, as recommended by the Subcommittee, was unwarranted.
