OPM Looks to Modernize Retirement Services With AI

Office of Personnel Management (OPM) Director Scott Kupor said artificial intelligence (AI) could help the agency modernize its retirement services operation, a manual, paper-based process that still relies on mailed documents.

Speaking at the UiPath Fusion conference on May 5, Kupor explained that OPM currently sends documents via “snail mail” from human resources (HR) departments and payroll departments for its retirement processing.

AI, he said, could help the agency improve the quality and efficiency of retirement processing.

“There are ways in which we should introduce AI,” Kupor said. For example, he said the agency could greatly benefit from integrating AI into OPM’s retirement services call centers.

“There’s no question if we can actually give you a very simple AI bot that you could communicate with via chat, or ways in which we can automate the call center operations so that you don’t have to talk to a live agent, but you can actually do the things you need to do more basically, like it’s just obvious that that’s a better solution,” Kupor said.

The OPM director noted that the goal is not to replace OPM employees, but to ensure those employees are available “for the things that only the people can do.”

“If you’ve got some complicated problem, then yes, I want you to talk to an individual. But if you’re trying to change your address on a retirement form, it’s just so obvious that we need to do that in a way that is automated,” Kupor said.

“None of this is rocket science,” he added. “It is just a basic, run-of-the-mill application of where computers can actually help facilitate customer support in a way that we just haven’t done previously.”

Kupor pointed to the launch of USA Class, which OPM unveiled earlier this week, as another example of leveraging AI to cut unnecessary delays and administrative burden. The AI-enabled tool automates the creation of federal job descriptions.

The tool will be available to all federal agencies through USA Staffing at no additional cost.

“If the AI can actually learn from what we’ve done in the past, and it can streamline the process, I’d much rather have my HR hiring managers focused on outbound recruitment or talking to candidates or stuff like that, rather than having them mired in a bunch of paperwork,” Kupor said of the new tool.

“In my mind, we should be doing this all day long,” he said. “So, this is just kind of iteration number one of what I think we can do to improve the efficiency of the hiring process.”