GAO has issued another in a series of grim assessments of OPM’s record in processing retirement applications, saying that even though OPM long has recognized that it needs to improve timeliness and accuracy, "the agency has thus far been unsuccessful in several attempts to develop the capabilities it has long sought."
"For over two decades, the agency’s retirement modernization efforts were plagued by weaknesses in management capabilities that are critical to the success of such endeavors. Among the management disciplines the agency has struggled with are project management, risk management, organizational change management, cost estimating, system testing, progress reporting, planning, and oversight," GAO told a recent House subcommittee hearing.
GAO noted that OPM recently took steps including adding personnel to retirement processing, but GAO said those steps are only "incremental" and that they "do not address the more fundamental need to modernize its legacy IT systems in order to significantly improve the efficiency of the process. Until OPM tackles that challenge, and develops the management capabilities to carry it out successfully, it may face ongoing difficulties in meeting the needs of future retirees."
OPM meanwhile recently said that due to tight budgets, it will have to cut back on the overtime it had been using to help address the backlog of applications as a replacement for more systemic changes.
GAO noted that in early 2008 as OPM was on the verge of going online with a major IT-based initiative called RetireEZ, GAO warned that tests showed the system would not perform as advertised, largely because OPM imposed a compressed testing schedule that did not examine the full scope of the project. OPM went ahead and launched RetireEZ anyway and the problems GAO warned about soon occurred, ultimately leading to a series of disputes between OPM and the contractor, and eventual abandonment of the project.
That was part of what GAO called in its most recent report a "long history of unsuccessful retirement modernization initiatives" dating to the late 1980s.
GAO also noted that OPM has redefined down what it considers to be current processing of applications. While OPM initially set a goal of being accurate in 99 percent of cases within 30 days, it now aims only to be accurate on 90 percent of cases within 60 days.
