The Office of Personnel Management took steps to address more pressing concerns from retiring federal employees ahead of the agency’s long-term effort to modernize retirement services.
The new “Retirement Quick Guide,” released Monday by OPM, is intended to help federal employees and recently retired people better understand and navigate the current federal retirement process.
“This is what we need right now,” Lori Amos, OPM’s deputy associate director of retirement services, told reporters Monday. “This is where we are…”
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The Office of Personnel Management took steps to address more pressing concerns from retiring federal employees ahead of the agency’s long-term effort to modernize retirement services.
new”Retirement quick guideThe document, released Monday by OPM, is intended to help federal employees and recently retired individuals better understand and navigate the current federal retirement process.
“This is what we need right now,” Lori Amos, OPM’s deputy associate director of retirement services, told reporters Monday. “This is where we are now. This one.”
OPM’s Retirement Services Division, the final point of contact for all federal employees to apply for retirement, has often been criticized for long wait times and unwieldy IT systems to process retirement applications. rice field. Currently, it takes an average of 3-5 months for OPM to process a retirement claim. This corresponds to the period between the employee’s official retirement date and the date the first retirement payment is credited to the individual’s bank account. In more extreme cases, a federal employee may have to wait a year or more before receiving his first severance pay.
OPM’s new guide doesn’t offer a definitive improvement in processing times per se, but it aims to give the federal government a clearer picture and timeline for the process, making the transition to retirement easier. and With the new guide, OPM said it wanted to proactively answer some of the more common federal retirement questions, particularly “What is the status of my retirement application?” Amos said.
Amos said the ultimate goal of the new retirement guide is to reduce errors in applications and, in turn, the timeline for processing retirement applications and the backlog of pending retirement claims in the OPM. Although OPM’s exit backlog has been trending downward, he still exceeds the agency’s regular target of 13,000 pending claims by more than 7,000.
“This guide tells applicants exactly what they need, or provides links to information so they know what they need. They know the forms they need to fill out. They will know which forms require a digital signature,” Amos said. “What we are trying to do is put together the information that we have published on our website. [the application] Reach OPM. ”
What’s in the quick guide?
This guide provides federal employees with an overview of steps to take before leaving, as well as links to more information about various benefits options and factors that can delay retirement. The most common reasons for delays include missing signatures and missing documentation, especially if the resignation applicant has worked at multiple different agencies during their career.
This guide also describes each step of the process from an OPM perspective and what happens to your application at each step. Federal employees can also find a list of links to more information, including: beneficiary overview, handbook For CSRS and FERS retirements and phone numbers, contact OPM’s Retirement Support Center. This guide is a condensed version of information that has previously been posted on several different pages on his OPM website. OPM created the guide by taking into account the most frequently asked questions from prospective retirees, conducting focus groups, and gathering feedback from recent retirees and benefits professionals on the retirement process.
“What we learned during the development of the guide is that most applicants do not understand where their case is in the process or who is filing it. is in OPM, but for the first 30 or 45 days, we still have problems with agencies and payroll centers,” Amos said. “By the time we received the application, we knew that federal employees planning to retire should be able to plan ahead. It is information that has
Amos said he hopes the guide will help employees understand at a more detailed level who to ask questions based on their application schedule.
“What I’m looking forward to is connecting the dots between the three key leaders in this process: agents, employees and OPM,” said Amos.
The National Association of Active and Retired Federal Employees (NARFE), an advocacy group focused in part on retirement services for federal employees, said the OPM’s new guidance is a step in the right direction. John Hutton, NARFE’s vice president of staff for policy and programs, said this is likely to help reduce confusion and uncertainty for retirement applicants, and the OPM has asked for answers about applicants’ application status. The number of calls to inquire about it may also decrease, he said.
With additional time and resources likely to become available, Hutton hopes the OPM will not only improve communication about the current situation, but also look to the bigger issues around retirement services. said. Beyond outlining the retirement process, Hutton said OPM needs to develop a case-tracking system that will keep them informed of progress. This is an approach that will prove more useful in the long run.
“Instead of accepting long processing times, we encourage process improvements and modernization, such as the use of online retirement applications integrated with OPM processing systems, to reduce processing times,” Hutton told Federal News. – Told the network.
OPM plans to update new guides monthly. However, retirement services systems need to be overhauled and modernized to enable real-time updates on retirement application status.
“We don’t have a system that can provide real-time status of individual cases. We’re still going through a paper-based process,” Amos said. “Until we modernize and implement a case management system that can track case whereabouts electronically, we will not be able to provide real-time status unique to each case.”
Further plans for post-retirement services are planned
In addition to more immediate responses to issues common to retiring federal employees, OPM has a long-term commitment to modernizing the entire retirement service. His fiscal 2024 budget request for OPM includes increased funding for retirement services to address legacy IT and make major changes.
Guy Cavallo, OPM’s Chief Information Officer, will be taking a step-by-step approach to modernizing IT. He said the agency’s future IT strategy for fiscal 2023-2026 will include a clearer plan for retirement services.
Meanwhile, OPM has made other recent updates to Retirement Services to try to reduce the retirement backlog. The agency has added a chatbot that allows users to ask and get answers to frequently asked questions and has increased the staffing of its retirement services call center.
As further modernization efforts begin to take effect, OPM may update the guide to reflect the changes, but the details are yet to be determined.
“I don’t know what this guide will look like when we embark on this IT modernization effort. “That’s yet to be decided, but I hope that as customers become more familiar with using this guide and the information it contains, they can somehow incorporate it into their future state.”
