Supply Management’s Control Environment Over Contracting Officers

The control environment is the foundation on which an organization builds and operates an effective system of internal control. The U.S. Postal Service had an annual contract spend of $12.9 billion in FY 2018; therefore, it is critical that Supply Management (SM) maintains an effective control environment over its contracting officers (CO). The objective of our audit was to assess the effectiveness of SM’s control environment over COs, specifically, staff competencies, oversight of contract activities, and workload management. The scope period was October 1, 2017 through June 30, 2019. This is the first of several audits to assess SM’s overall control environment.