In recent weeks, DOGE posted about the government's records mine in Pennsylvania, where more than 400 million federal retirement records are stored. They claim they've completely digitized the retirement process—but this isn't their victory to celebrate: The U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) started digitizing this process long before DOGE got involved. DOGE also canceled existing contracts and reduced staff on the project.
In 2024, OPM piloted updates to online retirement applications
In 2024 (prior to the arrival of DOGE), OPM announced efforts to develop and pilot a new Online Retirement Application (ORA) system. The pilot ran through the summer, and included updates to the way retirement calculations are made and efforts to move away from paper processes.
Goals of the pilot included testing the system, gathering feedback from employees and people who used the system.
Guy Cavallo, the former OPM CIO, summarized their approach to development and change management:
"We have to train and educate all the human resource officials at the agencies on what’s different. We’re taking a slow approach here, but being agile. We’re getting feedback from the initial users now that we will build into the into the updated version."
In the 2024 OPM Annual Performance Report, Acting OPM Director Robert H. Shriver, III, shared the importance of online retirement applications (emphasis is ours):
"OPM has taken important steps to improve the experience of retirees and prospective retirees in fiscal year 2024. To streamline the retirement process, OPM piloted an online retirement application, which allows prospective retirees from selected agencies to apply for their retirement benefits electronically. OPM continues to collect customer feedback during an ongoing pilot to identify strengths and opportunities to improve the application in the future. OPM also built the architecture for a minimum viable product of a digital file system that will integrate paper and digital records. This effort will enable a comprehensive view of retirement data and establish secure access to case information across organizations and work sites, allowing for more efficient and effective case management. In the past year, wait times at the Retirement Services call center decreased by more than 63 percent. OPM also reduced the average number of days to process new retirement cases by more than 20 percent and improved customer satisfaction on new retirement cases by 13 percent, compared to FY 2023. Based on this progress, OPM’s Inspector General removed the initial retirement application backlog from its list of top management challenges."
Furthermore, Shriver provided written testimony to the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability on improvements to the process and goals for further improvements (emphasis is ours):
"OPM has developed an IT modernization strategy that charts a path to digitize what has long been a paper-centric retirement application process. The expected outcomes include faster processing times, increased self-service options, higher customer satisfaction, and less time needed from annuitants, agencies, and OPM staff to complete a case.
This strategy is a multi-year effort that will require significant and sustained investment and partnership from Congress to succeed. While OPM works to build and implement new systems, we will need to rely on our legacy systems to ensure that services to annuitants and their families continue. The next few years will be critical for OPM as we begin execution of the digital strategy and develop several key new systems. We are already working on three core pieces of our strategy – the Janus retirement calculator, the Online Retirement Application, and the Digital File System."
DOGE claims "victory"
Now, DOGE seems to be taking credit for work that was well on it's way before they arrived:
- In April, NBC News reported, "In February, under the direction of DOGE, OPM staffers processed their first all-digital, no-paperwork federal retirement. The team was given a one-week goal, and it completed the retirement in two days."
- Then, in early May, DOGE claimed to have processed "all-digital" retirements for 25 people.
The problem is, these claims don't hold up when take a look at every step in the retirement process:
Steps 1 and 2 are managed by each individual agency, so DOGE wouldn't have made changes to that process at the data mine.
Work on step 3 began under the Biden administration with the pilot program mentioned above. And, according to an anonymous, verified source at OPM: DOGE actually cut the staff and funding for this project.
So their "victory" must be around step 4 on this chart, where they say they've shortened processes from months to a few days. We haven't seen evidence that supports this claim, nor do we know how it supports step 5.
What we think is really going on
It's likely that they've pulled together a minimum viable product (MVP), a term used by many tech firms to describe a short-term solution that's the first step of a longer-term strategy. This helps build momentum, and leaves room for improvement—but it does not describe a finished product.
This MVP might:
- Support simple use cases: For example, processing retiring federal employees who worked for only one agency in their career.
- Focus on a small part of the process: As explained in the timeline above, these first case may only cover steps 3 and 4 of the retirement process (and work on step 3 was completed before DOGE arrived).
- Use simple code solutions to bridge the human to system gaps: For example, moving files between systems, converting between different file types, or scanning files manually.
While we don't agree with their claims of victory, we support this type of approach—it takes time to build a system capable of processing tens of thousands of retirement applications. Especially when security and integrity are more important than speed. After all, this is not just paper they are shuffling around, these are the lives of dedicated civil servants all over the country.
MVPs work when they demonstrate something is possible, and enable continuous development. They do not work when you try one thing and quickly declare victory.
What's next
We are excited that this process will improve for retirees, thanks in no small part to work accomplished prior to DOGE's arrival, but we are dubious that this changes are "instant." Their claims leave out a lot of facts to support their so-called victories, while also leaving out the work that was already done by existing OPM staff.
Elon Musk claims that with manual processing, OPM was only able to process 10,000 retirees' paperwork in one month. We're looking forward to seeing the receipts about both processing times and number of paperwork processed. True efficiency means building processes and tools that work for people, and we are all for that. What we aren't for is taking credit for other people's work and declaring victory before you have a fully-functional application.