The story last week about the Office of Personnel Management bringing in a 25-year IT veteran, David Bohen, to serve as its new chief technology officer to concentrate on the agency’s outdated retirement system reminded me of my own recent experience with the federal retirement system.
I left federal government service over a year ago after 30+ years, but decided to delay my formal retirement because I was too busy and had heard about the long delays in processing retirement applications.
In fact, I remember well listening to OPM Director John Berry’s keynote at the FOSE Institute Knowledge Management Conference last May and about the improvements in processing time that had, and would, be made under his leadership. That gave me hope that if I waited a little longer my experience would be better and it was.
I was especially interested in the part of the story that said: “OPM also created a proof of concept of an online retirement application to demonstrate how an electronic, web-based application could be used to collect data from an applicant and his or her agency human resource office that is required when an employee retires. This information could be used to reduce dependence on the current paper process.”
The paper (online PDF) application was the only thing that really bothered me because I thought in this day and age it would be electronic.
So here are the things I learned and the timeline I experienced:
The online PDF form Application for Immediate Retirement (CSRS) and is 20 pages long. (Less than my OMB online security clearance which was over 50 pages long!)
I sent my paperwork on November 22nd. Note: The paperwork should be sent to: US Office of Personnel Management, P.O. Box 440, Boyers, PA 16017-0440, unless you are in a hurry like I was, and then it should be overnighted to: 1137 Branchton Road, Boyers, PA 16017-0440. It cannot be hand-delivered to OPM in Washington, DC.
In the meantime, I got prompt (about a week) email replies to my questions to: retire@opm.gov.
I got my Welcome to the Civil Service Retirement System letter and Reference Card on (dated December 5th) on December 12th
I got my Dear Annuitant Letter (dated December 15th) and Password (dated December 19th) on December 22nd
It said the final step would be when I receive my Benefits Booklet with my final annuity amount and other benefits information.
Given that the story said: “Cumbersome business practices, aging technology and a shortage of qualified staff have hampered OPM’s efforts to overcome a backlog of some 60,000 retirement applications and that OPM falls behind by 1,900 retiree applications a month,” I consider myself very well-served and thank OMB Director Berry and his staff for excellent service and making my holidays happy and new year bright with some spending money.