OPM Sets New Plan for Fixing Retirement Processing

The Office of Personnel Management has sent a new strategic plan for improving retirement services to Congress, the Washington Post's Joe Davidson reports.

The plan, slated to be unveiled Wednesday, involves taking an incremental approach to modernizing information technology systems, acknowledging that "previous efforts to automate the entire [retirement systems] process have failed." It also proposes to take an "all hands on deck" approach to tackling lingering issues, hiring 56 legal administrative specialists and 20 customer service specialists. Higher productivity would be expected of OPM staffers who process retirement applications.

The agency has had a series of problems in trying to modernize retirement processing systems and address a burgeoning backlog of claims.