OPM Cites Progress on Retirement Backlog

OPM says its average processing time on retirement applications is now 37 days and that 83.4 percent of new claims are processed in 60 days or less, close to its 90 percent goal. The backlog now stands at just over 14,000 cases, down from more than 61,000 at the start of 2012 when the average time was above five months—although there likely will be a rise in applications and thus the backlog in coming months because federal retirements tend to spike around the turn of a year. OPM also cited improvements in the time to answer calls to its call center, although the average time is still 14 minutes, and in the percentage of callers who get only a busy signal. At a House hearing last week on the long-running issue, OPM officials cited process improvements and noted a planned new case management system and transition to paperless processing. GAO meanwhile warned that over two decades OPM’s IT initiatives on retirement processing “were fraught with management weaknesses.”