Federal employees who are looking to retire rely on a largely paper-based system to submit their retirement applications, but the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) is looking to change that through a new online application.
OPM Chief Transformation Officer Catherine Manfre announced on Thursday that her agency is piloting a new online retirement application platform to improve its employee experience.
“Currently, a lot of our retirement services are done through paper, like actual paper, and one of the things we wanted to create was a digital-first way for applicants to their retirement system to provide that data,” Manfre said today at Carahsoft’s Government Customer Experience & Engagement Summit. “So, we now currently have a pilot actually in place with a handful of agencies to pilot that digital front door.”
“We’re simultaneously working on the digital back end, which is maybe not as exciting of a story, but is as important because if you’re going to allow people to come digitally in the front door, you need to have that data actually live somewhere,” she added. “And so, we’re working in tandem, but first piloting this online retirement application to allow retirees to apply digitally.”
Last year, OPM released the Retirement Quick Guide to help walk Federal employees through the retirement process and know what to expect as their retirement application is processed.
OPM developed the guide in partnership with the Lab at OPM, using human-centered design principles. The guide covers everything from when employees can expect to receive their interim and first annuity payments, steps to take before they retire, and factors that might delay their retirement processing.
Manfre said the guide “was so successful that the web page on our website that that content is housed on is one of the most highly trafficked pages on OPM’s site.”
As the agency looks for similar success through its online retirement application pilot, Manfre said that data will be “top of mind” for OPM.
Additionally, she said OPM is “looking to further test and learn from that pilot” to improve the employee experience of going through retirement.
