The Washington Post recently ran a story about the overhaul underway with the Office of Personnel Management to address one of OPM’s main issues — claim processing. According to the article, “OPM Management Director John Berry announced yet another overhaul of a system that left retirees waiting months for their checks.”
Surprisingly, OPM’s claim processing system is still paper-based, and when a claimant has worked for many different agencies, has military experience or family matters such as divorce, there can be a mountain of paperwork to be reviewed by OPM employees, many of which were downsized during Bush administration cutbacks.
Automation of the processing system has been a failure in the past at the expense of the taxpayer. It is stated that OPM will continue to automate the system, “incrementally, rather than attempting to remake the entire system at once.”
The plan calls for adding 80 staff members to significantly cut down the current average of 138 days that it takes to process claims. Berry went on to say that “We want to do everything we can to put as much of their money – at the end of the day we have to remember this is their money – in their pockets as quickly as we can.”
Read the full text of Joe Davidson’s article on the Washington Post’s website.