Introduction

This management alert presents issues the U.S. Postal Service Office of Inspector General (OIG) identified during our ongoing audit of the U.S. Postal Service’s Response to Sexual Harassment Complaints (Project Number 21-173). Our objective is to provide Postal Service officials immediate notification of these issues and make recommendations for corrective action.

We identified these issues while conducting a performance audit in accordance with generally accepted government auditing standards. Those standards require that we perform the audit to obtain sufficient, appropriate evidence to provide a reasonable basis for our findings and conclusions based on our audit objectives. We believe that the evidence obtained provides a reasonable basis for our findings and conclusions based on our audit objectives.

Background

Federal agencies, including the Postal Service, are required to comply with Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which makes it illegal for employers to allow anyone to be sexually harassed at work, regardless of sex, gender, or sexual orientation. The Postal Service launched the Workplace Environment Tracking System (WETS) on August 1, 2013, to provide a central nationwide repository for tracking harassment allegations and workplace environment issues. This system was designed to enable the Postal Service to identify trends and develop preventative measures against workplace harassment.

In accordance with Postal Service policy, area and district Human Resources managers (or their designees) use WETS to create and update Postal Service workplace harassment cases. To access WETS, users submit an access request through the eAccess system. The eAccess system communicates with WETS to confirm that requesters are approved to receive system access for the selected area(s) and district(s) associated with their user role.

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Source: USPS OIG