A Glimpse Of The Future

A friend of mine recently retired after working 30+ years for a government agency. As part of his separation processing, he was warned to expect a significant lag time between his retirement date and the beginning of his federal pension checks.

He retired at the end of August. He has yet to receive his first pension check. The current estimate for when he will begin receiving them is March 2012. His story:

I was forewarned of this by the HR retirement specialist and advised to accumulate as much annual leave as  possible, which would be paid to me as a lump sum with my last pay check. I accumulated 6 weeks and I have this as a little buffer. Otherwise I would be SOL and have to dig into savings.

In the interim he does get monthly checks equal to an estimated two-thirds of his regular check (less the full deductions for insurance premiums, taxes, etc.), with the promise of a full accounting and catch-up check at some unknown point in the future.

He's not alone.

(The federal government's Office of Personnel Management) (OPM) has a backlog of 60,000 retirement claims to be processed, with no business plan to bring claims procedures up to date.

As more federal agencies push to reduce payroll, there will soon be many more retirees ... the upcoming wave of retirees combined with OPM's dwindling resources and already slow pace would create a "perfect storm" for the agency.

"This is a mess and it can't continue, and it looks like it's going to get worse..."

The logjam in OPM retirement processing dates back to the 1980s. Since 1987, the agency has made four separate failed attempts to automate its retirement processing. Its most recent effort was launched in 2008 and terminated in February.

Four failed attempts?!? FOUR!?! Back when I was in the corporate world I made a pretty good living replacing outdated legacy systems with more modern ones. Quite a few of those systems were on the large side, with hundreds of thousands and even millions of records. We never had a total failure, although there were a few that took longer and cost more than the original estimates. So why can't the government do what just about any corporation can?

Perhaps because no one in the government is ever held accountable. Were the project managers and senior executives involved in the OPM fiascoes fired, demoted, or even reprimanded? Highly doubtful.

The same story goes on to discuss OPM's attempts to run its own job posting website.

During questioning from members of the House Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittee on the Federal Workforce, Director John Berry stood by OPM's decision to bring the redesign of the federal jobs board in-house rather than contract it out to Monster.com.

"Taxpayers are now paying for a system that doesn't work, costs more and takes money away from the private sector," Rep. Dennis Ross, R-Fla., chairman of the subcommittee, said in his opening statement.

Part of the reason given by OPM for bringing the job site in-house was a security breach of Monster.com in 2009. The OPM spokesman claimed that by bringing the system in-house they could ensure its security.

Yeah, right.

Reports of network security incidents at federal agencies have soared 650 percent during the past half-decade, jeopardizing the confidentiality and integrity of sensitive government information, federal auditors charged in a congressionally mandated report.

And these are the people who claim they can improve the best healthcare system in the world...