TOPICS
TOPICS
President's budget pushes electronic retirement system
About a year from now, federal employees may be able to begin accessing their retirement records online.
With the release of President Bush's budget Monday, the Office of Personnel Management outlined its hopes to attain $15 million in fiscal 2008 for its Retirement Systems Modernization project.
The funding would be used to "replace OPM's legacy information technology systems with modern technology, move from paper to electronic record-keeping and enhance core retirement business processes to meet the needs of active and retired federal employees by providing access to account information and planning tools," according to the president's budget proposal.
The system is being designed to improve the quality and timeliness of services to the more than 3 million active employees covered under the Civil Service Retirement System and the Federal Employees Retirement System.
Currently, when federal employees retire, it often takes months until they receive an accurate annuity payment. That's because OPM stores its paper-based retirement benefits documents in a series of file cabinets at a Boyers, Pa., facility. In fact, an OPM official said that last year, if the cabinets were laid end to end, they would stretch from Washington, D.C., to Baltimore and begin to come back.
By eliminating paper records, the new system will enable the government to better manage the retirement benefits of the 60 percent of federal employees expected to retire over the next 10 years, OPM officials said.
OPM Director Linda Springer said at a briefing Monday that gaining the resources necessary for modernization is the agency's highest funding priority.
"The men and women of the federal workforce [who] have spent decades working for us deserve to have their information calculated correctly the first time," Springer said.
OPM requested almost $27 million for the project in fiscal 2007, but under the continuing resolution passed last week in the House, the agency would receive only about $13 million. Springer said the $15 million request for 2008 would not be enough to finish the project, but would be sufficient to begin the process of creating electronic records for the 25,000 employees expected to begin retiring in March 2008.
Springer said OPM is aiming to go live with the project in February 2008. According to a timeline on the agency's Web site, all General Services Administration employees will be able to view their retirement information online as of the launch date. Four additional active employee migration waves will follow the launch, gradually bringing all active federal employees' information into the retirement system.
The National Active and Retired Employees Association praised the administration's request for modernization funds. "We're glad to see that OPM has made it a priority to speed up these claims to ensure that retirees receive their full annuity after they retire," the union said.
In May, OPM awarded a 10-year, $290 million contract to Hewitt Associates of Lincolnshire, Ill., to create the electronic system. Accenture later won an additional contract to develop business transformation and IT models to move the government to an electronic retirement system. Integic Corp. of Chantilly, Va., a subsidiary of Northrop Grumman Corp., won an agreement to digitize the employee retirement records.
COMMENTS
- "Accenture later won an additional contract " Why is the US government awarding contracts to foreign-based companies that avoid payment of US taxes? Congress, and in particular Duncan Hunter, needs to add requirements in the federal acquisition regulations that limit or prohibit the awarding of contracts to foreign operations that do not pay US taxes - it at least is unfair competition for US-based firms. Likewise, there needs to be a limit on awards to non-profit groups that are exempt from US taxes. Without these restrictions, I believe the US should be outsourcing much of its help center work to foreign countries. taxpayer Posted March 1, 2007 8:42 AM
- I will preface my response with: If it’s done right… the population would benefit greatly for the ability for online access and update capability for retirement issues. How must you protect this system? All that is known throughout the computer world. In brief: Yes, both electronic and hard copy (paper or microfiche) back-up copies should be kept in a separate location. All primary storage and processing devices should have UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supplies, to protect from power outages and brown-outs), fiber optic in-lines (to prevent power strikes), maximum RAID redundancy (multi-disk storage with built-in recovery capability, just in case), and the latest in firewalls and software protection. I understand the Luddite mentality, but the law of economics says we will be going to an electronic system, so why have separate ones? Ergonomics dictates there should be a relatively easy electronic method of access and an alternate human contact method; but most of us should be able to just get on board from home. As we’ve seen through the TSP, the weakest link will be the home computers. Besides the government sharing Norton site licenses with employees for their protection, perhaps there should be a government-sponsored program for the provisioning of employee home systems with CAC card machines. The government should make contracts with approved supplies and the employees should pay the relatively small price for access. That would mean yet another layer of security. This might even gain government purchase support as the same case could be made for teleworking, telecommuting, and/or TDY. Would a disaster still be possible? Yes, as they say “The best laid plans of mice and men…” In such cases, all bets are off. Regardless of storage media, only distance and dissimilarities will protect the backups and only “smart” procedures will protect access. You must protect and restore! Tip off. GovExec.com reader Posted February 8, 2007 4:40 PM
- I can only think of one thing scarier then hearing a new proposal by Bush, and that is a proposal by Bush and Springer (the motel manager queen). Why can they not leave things alone? How much more can they screw up before Bush's term is up and replaced by a new president? There is nothing safe about information on the net. Here we go again -- throw us to the wolves. My opinion is my own, I am sure there are others who feel the same though. I like the personal touch myself, even if it did take a little longer. If you are really ready to retire you can get by until everything is figured out. Leave me/us alone! If you were or are involved with NMCI, DMI, or one of the other wonderful programs that would fix everything, you know what I mean. Fail safe, Ha! I was locked out of the system for weeks because of hackers, and all the systems people could say was, “We are working on it.” This proposal is scary to me. Dave Posted February 7, 2007 10:43 AM
