Waste of the Day: Postal Service’s New Scanners Are Missing

Topline: The U.S. Postal Service recently lost at least 1,936 brand new barcode scanners, and likely many more.

What happened to the Postal Service and its scanners?

Employees are not following proper procedures for reporting missing scanners and are not checking their inventory frequently enough, according to a new audit from the agency’s inspector general.

How much money were the lost scanners worth? The Postal Service isn’t saying — but they may have accidentally revealed the “commercially sensitive” information.

Key facts: In 2019, the Postal Service upgraded its handheld scanners with 291,938 new “Mobile Delivery Device Technology Refresh” tools, or MDD-TRs.

Since then, 1,936 MDD-TRs have been officially reported as lost, which is almost 7% of the total. But the inspector general visited 15 random post offices and found that 20% of their scanners were missing. 

Based on that rate, the inspector general projects that “at minimum,” there are actually 7,209 missing MDD-TRs. The 1,936 figure is likely incorrect because several post offices are not tracking their inventory and have not instituted requirements to do so, according to the audit.

What are they hiding?

Background: Every dollar figure in the inspector general’s report is redacted.

When the audit was published on Oversight.gov — a website that compiles all inspector general reports — it was given a label reading “Questioned Costs: $1,148,319.”

OpenTheBooks emailed the Postal Service to ask what the dollar figure referred to. Immediately, the report’s label was changed to “Questioned Costs: $0.”

Tara Linne, director of communications for the Postal Service’s inspector general, told OpenTheBooks the dollar total had been “inadvertently posted” to Oversight.gov. 

Linne did not clarify whether $1,148,319 is actually the value of the missing scanners, or if it was a completely unrelated number published by accident. 

“The questioned costs include the costs that go into not maintaining an accurate inventory due to missing or incomplete documentation, or because of failure to follow the required procedures,” Linne said. “The redacted monetary value is considered to be commercially sensitive to the Postal Service, which under good business practice would not be disclosed.”

Barcode scanners can be purchased online for as little as $30, but high-end models can cost thousands.

Search all federal, state and local government salaries and vendor spending with the AI search bot, Benjamin, at OpenTheBooks.com. 

Summary: Losing packages in the mail is nothing new, but the Postal Service should at least be able to keep track of its own property.

The #WasteOfTheDay is brought to you by the forensic auditors at OpenTheBooks.com.

This article was originally published by RCI and made available via RealClearWire.