OPM’s new blog touts modernization while retirees wait for answers during the shutdown

Have you read Office of Personnel Management Director Scott Kupor’s weekly blog titled, “Secrets of OPM?”  If you haven’t, you may find it is written with a healthy sense of humor but also with a sense of accomplishing a huge goal of making the government more efficient and focusing on the other meaning of the acronym OPM: Other People’s Money. It’s a reminder that the government is funded by taxpayers’ dollars. 

Despite the government’s historic shutdown, the new director’s blog posts do not address how recent retirees will be impacted by delays in retirement processing or with directions on how they should participate in the health benefits open season that will begin on Monday. Many of these individuals are in the transition from being an employee to becoming an annuitant and they are in the dark wondering who they can contact for information and not knowing if their retirement application has even left their agency.   

Scanning through some of these recent blog posts from Kupor, who took the agency’s helm in July, there were many references to improving the efficiency of retirement processing. Although five of the posts were published since the start of the shutdown, curiously, there was no mention of the shutdown or the impact it is having on the recent retirements or the upcoming open season. Here are a few of the ideas that were mentioned: 

Oct. 20: Today, the government has deployed 119 (there may be more, but that’s all we could in fact find) distinct core HCM (‘Human Capital Management’) systems -- none of which integrate effectively with each other. For example, when a federal employee retires, we at OPM spend an excessive amount of time and money working with multiple agencies’ HR staff to assemble the “golden file” of that employee’s work history. This is costly, error-prone and leads to unnecessary delays in enabling a seamless transition to retirement. The ideal “to be” state is a single, pan-government core HCM system that gives the federal government full, real-time visibility into its workforce and drives effective workforce management on behalf of the American taxpayer. 

Oct. 10: Sometimes you just need to ask “why?” Why are we doing things this way? Why can’t we change it? We love paper and are premium customers of the U.S. Postal Service -- neither of which is good thing! In our retirement services division alone, we spend about five million dollars per year on paper mailings to our annuitants -- e.g., sending out 1099-R forms and notices of cost-of-living adjustment, mailing postcards for open enrollment season, etc. This, despite the fact we have email addresses for about two thirds of our annuitants! 

Oct. 3: For the past 50-plus years (and even longer), retirement applications have been processed in one way -- on paper. Retirees worked on paper applications, human resources (HR) departments completed paper forms and payroll providers sent OPM paper employment/pay histories -- each delivered courtesy of snail mail. And the dedicated OPM team literally thumbed through these physical papers to manually calculate (with the help of our friends at Microsoft Excel) the final benefits owed to a retiree. Today, ORA (Online Retirement Application) automates the front-end of the retirement process. It converts a paper-based/snail mail-based application process into a seamless online experience. Applicants, HR departments, and payroll providers now have an online system to perfect a retirement application and deliver it -- electronically -- to OPM. ORA integrates with a digital file system (DFS) that enables the OPM team to review all of the required documents online (vs on paper) and with an online annuity calculator (JANUS) that helps compute the annuitants' monthly check amount. 

State of Retirement Processing 

Changing the process of retirement is a huge undertaking, especially in a year when the federal government’s workforce shrinks from 2.4 million employees down to 2.1 million employees. Estimates have shown that approximately 100,000 federal employees left their government careers on Sept. 30 alone; the deadline for most resignations and retirements resulting from the Deferred Resignation Programs that began early this year. Approximately 60,000 of those separations are retirements with retirement applications that will be arriving at OPM’s Retirement Operations Center (ROC) in Boyers, Pa. Here is a sample of some emails received from recent retirees: 

• I took DRP2 on 9/30/25. I didn't receive an estimated annuity on November 3 as expected, and the retirement specialist name that I was given is not responding. I completed my retirement application in GRB on April 21 and then the new ORA in early July. I am concerned about my health insurance. Do you have any insights on this topic? I kept up my end of the bargain and left under VERA. 

• I am currently a federal employee on furlough. I submitted my retirement application through ORA in July with a retirement date of Oct. 31, 2025. I have verified my years of service, and I received notice that my application has been certified and is currently in payroll review. Should the shutdown continue past Oct. 31, how will my retirement application be affected? 

OPM’s Retirement Services recently posted a video on what to expect after retirement. Once OPM receives your application, they will send you a passcode and a welcome letter. You will be able to access OPM’s Services Online system. OPM has published some information regarding retirement processing that states: 

• Within 14 days of OPM receiving your application interim pay is authorized for applicants who apply for immediate retirement. Interim pay processing starts once OPM receives the complete retirement application package from the agency. There are rare situations where an applicant may not be authorized to receive interim payments. 

• Within 76 days, immediate retirement will be finalized.  Immediate retirements include voluntary, early voluntary, and discontinued service/involuntary separation retirements. This also includes disability retirement applications approved by OPM. This processing time does not include deferred or postponed retirement applications. 

Why such specific number of days? Processing days reflect the cases processed in September 2025. The Retirement Quick Guide can also provide you with information about the overall retirement application process when you retire from federal service.  

Before the retirement applications can be submitted to OPM for processing, the employee must complete the ORA and submit it to the agency Human Resources Office for approval. This must be completed before the application moves to the payroll provider for processing the employee off the agency payroll.  

One problem is that due to the government shutdown and furloughs, many of those applications have not left the agency and this will undoubtedly cause significant delays despite the new Online Retirement Application (ORA) designed to speed up the front end of the retirement process. OPM is expected to publish the number of retirement claims received in October (which would mostly be the Sept. 30 retirement claims) any day now. It will be interesting to see how many of those 60,000 retirement claims have arrived at OPM to begin processing.  

Fortunately, despite the shutdown, some OPM functions are not funded by the annual appropriations process and are exempt from a shutdown. For example, OPM's Retirement Services division is funded by a trust fund (Civil Service Retirement and Disability Fund), allowing it to operate normally during a lapse in appropriations.