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Situation (cont'd)

"The solution at the time," added Stephanie Dillard, "was to pull other staff from their jobs at the beginning of each month to help mailroom staff manually open mail and tape together forms the letter openers had ripped. This not only added to our labor cost of processing mail; it also negatively impacted morale and diverted staff away from their own important responsibilities of serving participants."

In addition to recognizing a need for improved processing of incoming mail, the automation committee identified problems in outgoing mail processing and internal mail sortation. These included:

• Regularly pulling other staff from their jobs to manually fold and insert into envelopes thousands of forms, food stamp surveys and other communications to participants, then manually seal the envelopes.
  
• The use of stand-alone mechanical scales that were often not calibrated and did not interface with mail machines. This resulted in inaccurate postage calculation and required error-prone manual entry of postage values into the meter for each mail piece.
  
• The lack of a mail accounting system to accurately track postage costs for each aid program.
  
• The need for modular mail sortation furniture and mail distribution centers on each floor for efficient internal sortation and delivery of incoming and outgoing mail.

After submitting its findings with a recommendation to modernize mail equipment and processes to DPSS senior management, including Steven Golightly, interim director; Will M. Stewart, director, Bureau of Workforce Services; and John O. Murrell, director of administrative services, the automation committee received approval and full support to move forward. The committee then invited several mail equipment vendors to bid on the contract.

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