Fedweek

The prime contractor told the TSP board it encountered previously undetected errors that led to unexpected account access issues. Image: tsingha25/Shutterstock.com

The prime contractor behind the TSP’s new operating system has admitted to missteps and design problems that “negatively impacted the participant experience and TSP brand.”

A presentation by officials of Accenture to the August meeting of the TSP board said that the required process for participants to re-establish their personal online accounts “was cumbersome, contained previously undetected errors, and led to unexpected account access issues.”

The officials also admitted to “significant call center challenges”; at the peak just after the June 1 changeover the centers were receiving three times as many calls as they had projected.

Other issues, they said, included what they called the “extended” blackout period before the new system went live during which participants could not make certain transactions—at a time of falling stock and bond markets that had made many investors anxious about their savings—and the “degrees of changes impacting participants.”

Officials of Accenture Federal Services had been called in by the board after complaints by participants—which are continuing, although fewer in recent weeks—about difficulties in reestablishing their personal accounts; long waits for customer service which in some cases still did not solve their problems; and information that did not carry over into the new system such as historical account balances and, for many, beneficiary designations. (The TSP has said the latter was done on purpose due to issues with those designations but that they remain on file and would be honored in the case of the participant’s death.)

Those complaints in turn have led to an unusual level of scrutiny of the TSP by Congress, who have commissioned the GAO review the “planning, contract award and implementation” and the board’s oversight of the process.

The presentation listed steps taken in response including changes to the log in process and the addition and increased training of customer service agents. Average wait time on hold is now less than a minute and 75 percent of calls are answered in less than 20 seconds, it said.

However, it also showed that only just above 2 million of account holders have set up new personal accounts, meaning that more than two-thirds have yet to go through that process.

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