Skip to main content

NARFE President to Testify Tomorrow Before the House on Retirement Claims Processing

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Jessica Klement
December 9, 2014 703-838-7760
  jklement@narfe.org

Alexandria, VA – Richard G. Thissen, president of the National Active and Retired Federal Employees Association (NARFE), will testify before the House tomorrow that the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) continues to make progress decreasing the backlog of federal employee retirement claims, bringing the inventory to a manageable level.

In January 2012, there were major problems with federal retirement annuity claims processing. But in his written testimony, Thissen said that OPM has made remarkable improvements over the past two years.

“Thanks in large part to the efforts laid out in [OPM’s] Strategic Plan, we have noticed a considerable decline in complaints from NARFE members,” Thissen said. “We believe the decline indicates OPM is doing a much better job of answering customer calls regarding the status of their claims, and utilizing an online system to provide individual status updates regarding claims processing.”

In May 2014, OPM began tracking the number of cases processed within 60 days, with a goal of processing 90 percent of cases within that time frame. At 83.4 percent in November, OPM is not meeting that goal but is coming close. Out of the 14,039 cases in the queue in November, 12,460 (88.8 percent) were 1-60 days old; 768 (5.5 percent) were 61-90 days old; 611 (4.4 percent) were 91-180 days old; and 200 (1.4 percent) were more than 180 days old.

“While OPM has made substantial progress on the very old cases, over six months is still too long for retirees to wait for their full annuity check,” said Thissen.

Despite the improvements in claims processing, the system remains paper-based and more costly and time-consuming than modern technologies should allow. OPM unveiled an Information Technology (IT) improvements plan in February 2014 to address this issue.

“There is still more work to do to modernize the system,” Thissen said. “Retirement claims processing remains buried (literally and figuratively) in a cave in rural Pennsylvania, as if still in the Stone Age. While we continue to support a multistep and incremental approach in order to avoid the errors of previous attempts, it is past time to implement the necessary IT improvements to bring the retirement process into the 21st century.”

One area Thissen will focus on is the failure of agencies to improve error rates in retirement-package submissions to OPM.

“While OPM bears responsibility for processing the claims, a federal employee’s transition to a rewarding retirement does not start with claims processing. Unfortunately, the government-wide error rates for retirement submissions are in double-digit percentages. There does not seem to be significant improvement overall in error rates from 2012 to 2014. After two years, agencies should be performing better,” Thissen concluded.

Thissen will testify Wednesday, December 10, at 1:30 p.m., before the House Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittee on the Federal Workforce, the Postal Service and the Census. To read Thissen’s full written testimony, click here

 # # #

The National Active and Retired Federal Employees Association (NARFE), one of America’s oldest and largest associations, was founded in 1921 with the mission of protecting the earned rights and benefits of America’s active and retired federal workers. The largest federal employee/retiree organization, NARFE represents the interests of nearly five million current and future federal annuitants, spouses and survivors.