Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton, D-D.C., has emerged as a prominent voice in Congress on the issue and wants an IG at the TSP. Image: Anton27/Shutterstock.com
By: FEDweek StaffA House member has said she will ask the GAO to review the customer service problems that arose when the TSP transitioned to a new operating system June 1 and that she intends to offer legislation to create an independent inspector general’s office within the agency.
“I am deeply concerned about the widespread problems with the new TSP online system,” said Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton, D-D.C., who has emerged as a prominent member of Congress on the issue.
“I hear daily from constituents about the many problems with the new system. I will continue to demand immediate fixes to the problems, but we need to understand how this debacle occurred and to create new accountability mechanisms at the [Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board, the agency’s formal name], which is why I am requesting a GAO report and introducing legislation to create an inspector general at the FRTIB,” she said in a statement.
She earlier raised the prospect of congressional hearings, and although her latest statement did not mention that possibility, it’s common for Congress to hold hearings based on GAO reports. While technically members of Congress only request such reviews, in practice they rarely are refused. Reviews by the GAO normally take a number of months but in some cases that process can be shortened.
With about 300 employees, the TSP is one of the few agencies of its size or larger that does not have an independent IG’s office. The TSP contracts out much of its customer service operations, with the agency saying the contractor has increased the number of agents substantially in response to high call volumes that have resulted in some cases in hold times of several hours or more.
Those calls primarily relate to difficulties that many investors have been experiencing in creating new personal accounts, which the new operating system required them to do. Other common complaints about the new system involve missing beneficiary designation information and the shortage of historic data on an account.
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