Service Performance Reporting

POSTAL REGULATORY COMMISSION <CFR>39 CFR Part 3055</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. RM2026-1; Order No. 9397]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 3211-AA40</RIN> <SUBJECT>Service Performance Reporting</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Postal Regulatory Commission. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Notice of proposed rulemaking. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The Notice of Proposed Rulemaking proposes revisions to update the existing annual service performance reporting requirements for the Postal Service's Market Dominant products. The proposed revisions are based on both recent legal developments and the Commission's experience with the existing rules. This document informs the public of the filing, invites public comment, and takes other administrative steps. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> <E T="03">Comments are due:</E> January 19, 2026. <E T="03">Reply comments are due:</E> February 9, 2026. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Submit comments electronically via the Commission's Filing Online system at <E T="03">https://www.prc.gov.</E> Those who cannot submit comments electronically should contact the person identified in the <E T="02">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT</E> section by telephone for advice on filing alternatives. The Rule Summary can be found on the Commission's Rule Summary Page at <E T="03">https://www.prc.gov/rule-summary-page.</E> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> David A. Trissell, General Counsel, at 202-789-6820. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Table of Contents</HD> <EXTRACT> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">I. Background</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">II. Basis of Proposed Rules</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">III. Proposed Rules</FP> </EXTRACT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Background</HD> The Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act (PAEA) enhanced the Commission's role in overseeing how the Postal Service reports information. <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> The PAEA requires the Commission to prescribe the content and form of the public reports that the Postal Service files with the Commission under section 3652. 39 U.S.C. 3652(e)(1). The Commission may initiate proceedings to improve the quality, accuracy, or completeness of Postal Service reporting whenever the Commission determines that service performance data have become significantly inadequate, could be significantly improved, or otherwise requires revision as necessitated by the public interest. 39 U.S.C. 3652(e)(2). The PAEA introduced new requirements that led to the Postal Service developing service standards (a delivery day range and business rules), service performance goals (on-time percent targets), and service performance measurement systems. <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act (PAEA), Public Law 109-435, 120 Stat. 3198 (2006). <E T="03">See</E> 39 U.S.C. 3652(e). </FTNT> Following a multi-year evaluation process, on July 5, 2018, the Commission approved the use of the Internal Service Performance Measurement (SPM) System. <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> In doing so, the Commission found the applicable standard for use of an internal service performance measurement system to be whether the system is capable of reporting accurate, reliable, and representative service performance data. <E T="03">Id.</E> at 15. From a design perspective, SPM is significantly more complex than the measurement systems that preceded it. In recent months, the Postal Service has three times given the Commission notice of substantial planned changes to the SPM system. <SU>3</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>  Docket No. PI2015-1, Order Approving Use of Internal Measurement Systems, July 5, 2018 (Order No. 4697). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>3</SU>  In the first two of these instances, the Commission put in place interim reporting requirements to enable it to evaluate the effect of these changes on SPM's accuracy, reliability, and representativeness, and also to evaluate whether any revisions to the Commission's service performance reporting requirements with respect to measurement exclusions are necessary. <E T="03">See</E> Docket Nos. RM2024-9 and PI2025-2, Interim Order Regarding Proposed Service Performance Measurement Changes, March 28, 2025, at 22-23, 37-39, 40-41 (Order No. 8761). These reporting requirements were partially modified by Order No. 8823. <E T="03">See</E> Docket Nos. RM2024-9 and PI2025-2, Order Conditionally Granting Motion for Reconsideration of Order No. 8761, April 30, 2025 (Order No. 8823). <E T="03">See also</E> Docket Nos. RM2024-9, PI2025-2, and PI2025-5, Interim Order Regarding Further Proceedings on Planned Service Performance Measurement Changes, June 27, 2025, at 23-24 (Order No. 8942). The third notice of planned changes was dismissed without prejudice. <E T="03">See</E> Docket Nos. RM2024-9, PI2025-2, PI2025-5, and PI2025-6, Order Dismissing Without Prejudice Notice of Planned Service Performance Measurement Changes, October 8, 2025 (Order No. 9241). </FTNT> The recent enactment of the Postal Service Reform Act of 2022 (PSRA) codified a requirement for the Postal Service to set reasonable performance targets for each product and to provide those targets to the Commission for the Commission to evaluate compliance each year. <SU>4</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>4</SU>  Postal Service Reform Act of 2022, Public Law 117-108, 136 Stat. 1127 (2022). </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Basis of Proposed Rules</HD> Pursuant to 39 U.S.C. 503, 3652, 3653, 3691, and 3692, the Commission proposes revisions to the service performance reporting rules at 39 CFR part 3055, subpart A. First, the Commission proposes revisions to existing sections 3055.4 and 3055.5 to more specifically address changes to internal service performance measurement systems. These revisions would establish a burden of proof that proposed changes to such systems would be required to meet and would prevent the Postal Service from implementing changes without prior Commission approval. They would also codify the Commission's existing authority to initiate a proceeding to review such systems at any time, and would implement a procedure whereby interested persons could petition the Commission to initiate such a proceeding. Second, the Commission proposes revisions to existing section 3055.5 to require the Postal Service to begin providing notice of all changes to service standard delivery day ranges and changes to origin/destination ZIP Code pairs that affect the number of days to delivery, at least 30 days prior to implementation. Third, the Commission proposes revisions to existing sections 3055.6 and 3055.7 in recognition of the PSRA's requirement that the Postal Service establish and file with the Commission reasonable performance targets, which the Commission must use to evaluate compliance for each product. 39 U.S.C. 3692(a). The Postal Service would be required to provide sufficient information about the criteria used to select the targets for the Commission to be able to determine, by a preponderance of the evidence, that the targets are, in fact, reasonable. The Commission finds that each of these revisions should improve the quality of service performance data and further the public interest. 39 U.S.C. 3652(e)(2)(B)-(C). <HD SOURCE="HD1">III. Proposed Rules</HD> <LSTSUB> <HD SOURCE="HED">List of Subjects in 39 CFR Part 3055</HD> Administrative practice and procedure, Reporting and recordkeeping requirements. </LSTSUB> For the reasons stated in the preamble, the Commission proposes to amend 39 CFR part 3055 as follows: <HD SOURCE="HED">PART 3055—SERVICE PERFORMANCE AND CUSTOMER SATISFACTION REPORTING</HD> 1. The authority citation for part 3055 is revised to read as follows: <HD SOURCE="HED">Authority:</HD> 39 U.S.C. 503, 3622, 3651, 3652, 3653, 3691, 3692, 3705. <SUBPART> <HD SOURCE="HED">Subpart A—Annual Reporting of Service Performance Achievements</HD> </SUBPART> 2. Revise § 3055.4 to read as follows: <SECTION> <SECTNO>§ 3055.4 </SECTNO> <SUBJECT>Internal service performance measurement systems.</SUBJECT> (a) Service performance measurements obtained from internal service performance measurement systems or hybrid service performance measurement systems (which are defined as systems that rely on both an internal and an external measurement component) shall not be used to comply with any reporting requirement under subparts A or B of this part without prior Commission approval. (b) The Postal Service shall file notice with the Commission describing any proposed changes to internal or hybrid service performance measurement systems (including proposed changes to any associated reporting methodologies or the use of proxies). In proposing such changes, the Postal Service must demonstrate, by a preponderance of the evidence, that internal or hybrid service performance measurement systems will be capable of producing accurate, reliable, representative, and useful service performance data and results. The Commission may summarily dismiss (without prejudice to refiling) any proposal that fails to include this information. The Postal Service's proposal must specify any planned implementation date(s), any requested decision date(s), and the reasons therefor. Preponderance of the evidence means proof by information that, compared with that opposing it, leads to the conclusion that the fact at issue is more probably true than not. (c) Changes to internal or hybrid service performance measurement systems proposed pursuant to paragraph (b) of this section may not be implemented without prior Commission approval. (d) The Commission may initiate a proceeding at any time to consider whether internal or hybrid service performance measurement systems are producing accurate, reliable, representative, and useful service performance data and re ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 15k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━