OPM graph showing strategic plan vs actual performance for processing federal retirement claims
Federal News Radioreported yesterday that the Office of Personnel Managementis making little progress in reducing its backlog of federal retirement claims. The OPM eliminated overtimein April and the number of claims which have been processed has dropped significantly. The good news, if there is any, is that the average time to process a claim is down to 91 days from 156 days in Jan. 2012.
A heavy volume of new claims arrived with the new year and the backlog climbed to 41,103 at the end of February. In July, the agency processed fewer claims than it received. In period March through May, the backlog was reduced about 13,000 claims. No progress was made in June and in July the number of received new claims exceeded the claims processed.
The backlog at the end of July was 25,601 claims. OPM told Federal News Radio that it expects to receive about 8,400 new claims in August and to process 9,500. While this ties in with the projections in their strategic plan, the OPM failed to meet its June and July processing goals. The intent of the plan is to process 90 percent of all new claims within 60 days. In reality, those hoping to retire will face at least a 50 percent longer wait.
