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 One Beltway Center |
President's MessageMarch 23, 2010 Dear Leaguers, As most of you know by now, over a year ago, at our 2009 National Legislative Forum, Pat Donahoe promised League Postmasters that he would do away with wasteful, redundant logs and reports. Soon after that event, I contacted Mr. Donahoe and suggested a committee of Postmasters to work as a Redundant Reports team. He told me to go ahead and put a team together. I selected Bill Donaldson, Postmaster of Canton OH to head up the committee and picked at least one Postmaster to serve from each Area. Andrea Cammer, Janie Holder, Norma Powell, Diane McCoy, Melinda Milone, Denise Owen, Keith Kopp, Kelly Strong and Roberta Stevens-Simmons all volunteered to work as part of this special committee. When I submitted these names to Mr. Donahoe, I suggested to him that he appoint a like number of Napus Postmasters to serve with our Leaguers. The first committee telecons went well with Pat Donahoe personally participating in the process. Every report or log nationwide was identified. Eventually, Bill Donaldson and his committee submitted their report on the logs and reports. Things heated up at Postal Headquarters and nothing happened for a while. I emailed Mr. Donahoe to ask what was going on with the progress of the committee. He answered from an airport to let me know that he’d just left a meeting with Mike Daley who suggested that the entire report process go wireless. Little did I know at the time that that idea had been tendered by Norma Powell, already part of the committee! Mr. Donahoe was especially pleased with that suggestion. I inquired a couple of months later about the committee’s progress. At that time Mr. Donahoe told me that he had assigned the effort’s completion to his new Vice President of Delivery and Post Office Operations, Dean Granholm. My heart dropped; not only had the process stopped, but responsibility had been passed on. In February, the management association presidents were invited to meet with Mr. Granholm regarding the Redundant reports. By then, more than a year had elapsed since the Legislative Forum in which the effort was born. I felt sure that all Mr. Granholm would do would tell us the Postal Service had given up the effort as too complicated. I was quite surprised when we did finally meet. Dean Granholm told us that he too was a little skeptical when he was assigned to take over the process. He said he quickly changed his mind when he saw that there were 42 daily or weekly logs or checklists required by Areas and districts. Additionally, there were as many as 12 other local reports required. He also realized, to his dismay, that many of the required reports originated from him working in his old capacity in the Western Area! Rather than go through the entire list of reports examined, I’ll just talk about the results of all the studies. Mr. Granholm’s team eliminated reports and logs that asked for information already available from existing USPS data sources as well as items duplicated on different reports. He suggested a single “All Clear” scan a day to signify that the Postmaster had done his job and all tasks were performed that day. Zero Bundle Investigation reports would be eliminated and replaced with an electronic report. 3-M and Missent Mail reports would be moved to WEB. Districts and Areas would be required to use electronic data resources to extract all data possible. The gathering of any information not already available passively that an Area might consider essential, must but be approved by Postal Headquarters. The program is expected to rolled out by, appropriately, April Fool’s Day! This is fantastic news, and if it works as envisioned, the effort will greatly reduce the burden on Postmasters and supervisors! Besides greatly reducing the huge number of reports, the requirement will be for every possible reporting to be done electronically. Over the next month or so, Areas and districts will spend time weaning themselves of so many reports and logs upon which they have become dependent. Already I’ve heard of a district that has cancelled much of the required reporting for its smaller offices. Thank you so much Pat Donahoe for being true to your word on this very important issue. Thank you to Dean Granholm and your Headquarters crew in furthering this process. Many thanks to Bill Donaldson for heading up the committee effort and to League and Napus Postmasters who helped identify the offending reports. And finally, thank you to that League Postmaster (you know who you are) who had the courage to challenge Pat Donahoe on this issue over a year ago at our National Legislative Forum! We expect to see good things come from this very positive effort! Respectfully, Charley Mapa President, The LEAGUE |
League EventsJuly 31 - August 4, 2011 National League of Postmasters Convention Hyatt Regency Albuquerque |
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