Memorandum on Improving the Postal Practices of Federal Agencies.

Memorandum for the Heads of Departments and Agencies

In the past several years, the Post Office Department has aggressively sought to cope with rapidly increasing mail volumes by operational and transportation improvements, research and engineering, modernization of obsolete facilities, and construction of modern mail-processing plants.

One of the basic problems in efficient utilization of mechanization systems arises from the wide diversity of mail pieces characteristics, making it impossible to achieve continuous smooth-running operation of this complex equipment. Expensive manual labor is needed to monitor the machines, to extricate jammed mail and to manually re-process it into the mail flow. Postal engineers are unable to obtain desired machine performance until mail with undesirable characteristics is eliminated. These vulnerable characteristics are now well understood.

The Post Office Department is planning an ambitious national program to make lettersize mail more nearly compatible with high-speed machine processing. This will not involve arbitrary or harsh restrictions but merely the following of certain simple guidelines and an understanding of the problems involved.

It is my intention that the Government, which generates a substantial part of national mail volume, provide the leadership and example to achieve the important cost savings possible from this program. The business and industrial community will certainly follow our example.

The Administrator of the General Services Administration will act as central coordinator for the Government community. Each Department and Agency is directed to designate its chief administrative officer to carry out mail improvement recommendations within his organization. The name of each designee will be provided to the Administrator of GSA. The Post Office Department will provide guidelines, technical advice and test services to the General Services Administration and through them to other Agencies and Departments to support the reform of postal practices within Government.

I consider this program to be a vital aspect of our cost reduction efforts in Government warranting urgent and continuing attention to postal processing requirements in Government.

LYNDON B. JOHNSON