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Los Angeles County's Department of Public and Social Services Renovates Mail
Centers and Improves Mail Processing Efficiency with Modern Mailing Systems
Installed at 65 Facilities
(cont'd)
Mattie Gardette described the situation this way: "At the beginning of each month, the
DPSS receives a deluge of mail from participants including forms and receipts that they
must provide to continue qualifying for aid, whether in the form of cash, food stamps,
medical or job placement services. Our existing letter openers were not able to handle the
increasing volume of mail the DPSS received since their purchase. The letter openers
would also often tear the forms the participants sent back, and destroy the cancellation
date on the envelope, which the DPSS needs to prove that it provides timely services to
its participants."
"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.
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