the OPM director faulted years of adding more budget and headcount as a stopgap fix to a problem that demands reinvention and new thinking. Image: Iron Mountain
By: FEDweek StaffOPM director Scott Kupor has expressed confidence that an administration initiative to address the long-recognized issue of delays in processing of federal retirement applications will succeed where others have failed.
A blog posting focuses on what he calls a more thorough effort than those of the past on moving from paper to electronic in both the employment records used in calculating benefits eligibility and in the application process itself.
In particular, he called attention to the storage of paper records in a former mine in Boyers, Pa., where processing occurs—a well-known and never disguised operation that is “discovered” from time to time by members of Congress, news reports and incoming members of a new presidential administration.
Says the posting, “Past attempts at modernization – three separate initiatives in each of the 1980s, ‘90s and ‘00s, together costing taxpayers an estimated $130 million – have failed, leaving us with paper-based processes that are inefficient and costly. Why did these efforts fail? There are no simple answers, but the proposed solutions didn’t address the core issues. Instead, the workplan focused on digitizing (a fancy way to say “scanning”) hundreds of millions of existing documents, without reforming the overall retirement process with a modern, tech-forward solution.”
“To be clear, this is a leadership and an organizational systems problem, not a people problem. Simply put, these employees have been failed by a system that prioritizes adding more budget and more headcount as a stopgap fix to a problem that demands reinvention and new thinking,” he added.
He cited OPM’s launch in June of an online portal designed to streamline the retirement application process for employees and HR and payroll offices, saying that “we hope never to see another piece of retirement application paperwork enter the mine.” He also said an “enormous amount of technology work” is underway to improve the communications among the more than 100 HR IT systems, “very few of which actually talk to one another.”
He said, though—as OPM has said repeatedly over the years—that some of the causes of delays in retirement application processing are outside OPM’s control.
For example, he said, “sometimes people are divorced and the state in which they were divorced requires that OPM collect a notarized court document reflecting the agreed-upon resolution of retirement assets, sometimes people have medical disabilities that impact their retirement and thus require a full review of all medical records, etc. These are not trivial complications and are often subject to timelines outside of OPM’s control.”
OPM Advises Agencies on Conducting RIFs During Shutdown
Updated Shutdown Contingency Plans Show Range of Impacts
Use Shutdown as Justification for More RIFs, OMB Tells Agencies
Unions Win a Round in Court Disputes over Anti-Representation Orders
Deferred Resignation Periods End for Many; Overall 12% Drop
Senate Bill Would Override Trump Orders against Unions
TSP Adds Detail to Upcoming Roth Conversion Feature
See also,
Legal: How to Challenge a Federal Reduction in Force (RIF) in 2025
How to Handle Taxes Owed on TSP Roth Conversions? Use a Ladder
The Best Ages for Federal Employees to Retire
Best States to Retire for Federal Retirees: 2025
Retention Standing, ‘Bump and Retreat’ and More: Report Outlines RIF Process
FERS Retirement Guide 2025 – Your Roadmap to Maximizing Federal Retirement Benefits
