Audit Report on USPS Inbound International Parcels

The U.S. Postal Service reported receipt of about 498 million international parcels for calendar year 2017, and a recent audit report from the USPS Office of Inspector General (OIG) aims to evaluate the accuracy and completeness of financial and operational inbound international parcel volume data.

The audit found that financial data on inbound international parcels is generally accurate and complete, although it points to instances in which it was not possible to reconcile operational data used to manage these parcels with the financial data.

OIG recommends that management undertake the following steps:

• design and document regular controls over operational inbound international volume and weight data transmitted between the Global Business System (GBS) and the Enterprise Data Warehouse (EDW);

• evaluate and implement, as appropriate, a retention strategy for key data transferred from GBS to EDW that helps address operational data reliability concerns;

• develop a methodology to estimate and track mail volume for Letter Class Untracked Packets in EDW; and

• create an internal reporting mechanism to generate inbound international parcel volume data from EDW.

To read the full audit report, click here.