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The Office of Personnel Management lacks a clear vision and a specific IT strategy to modernize its retirement claims process, the Government Accountability Office argued. OPM, however, attributes its challenges to a lack of funding, leadership and staffing challenges.
New retirement claims data from the Office of Personnel Management shows a reversal of previous trends around how fast the agency is processing cases.
The number of federal employees submitting retirement claims in March is holding steady from February, according to an update released by the Office of Personnel Management. Meanwhile, OPM increased the number of claims it was able to process last month, leading to a decrease in the backlog.
For now, the 35-day government shutdown does not seem to have caused a massive increase in federal retirement, despite predictions to the contrary.
More retirement claims were processed in November than in the two months prior, but OPM still has work to do as 2019 approaches.
September saw fewer new retirement claims in September — 7,142 — than August — 8,826 — but OPM also processed fewer claims in that time than the month before.
The Office of Personnel Management processed more retirement claims than it received in August, which helped it to reduced its backlog to the lowest level since the end of April.
The Office of Personnel Management stepped up its game in March, processing 13,262 retirement claims, the highest amount for a single month in years.
Last month, 13,290 federal employees filed retirement claims with OPM, the highest number in a February since 2013.
Retirement claims surged in January, holding true to the pattern seen in previous years.
The Office of Personnel Management sped up its processing of federal retirement claims in September, but only resulted in a modest reduction in its overall claims backlog.
The Office of Personnel Management continued to make progress in whittling down its backlog of unprocessed retirement claims during the month of June. The backlog stood at 14,530, the lowest it's been since last June.
The Office of Personnel Management took advantage of the lowest number of new retirement claims since December 2016 to reduce its backlog by nearly 3,000 claims. OPM’s retirement backlog currently sits at 16,140 claims, the lowest number yet in 2017.
OPM took longer in April to process retirement claims within 60 days compared to other months throughout the year. The agency processed 27 percent of the retirement claims it received in April within the standard 60 days or less, well below the 77 percent processing rate OPM posted in March. OPM also received slightly fewer retirement claims last month compared to April 2016.