Federal retirement applications will have to be electronic starting early next month, marking a step away from the government’s paper-based process for retiring workers, under which an infamous Pennsylvania cave was filled with personnel records and caught the attention of billionaire Elon Musk himself.
Now, OPM says that it has successfully piloted a new Online Retirement Application system alongside Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.
Starting June 2, all new retirement applications have to be submitted electronically for agencies that use the National Finance Center and Interior Business Center, OPM told agencies in a May 7 memo. Those centers are two shared services that offer human resources services for other agencies across the government. By July 15, OPM will no longer take paper submissions at all, it said.
“Retirement from federal service is finally entering the digital age,” said OPM Acting Director Chuck Ezell in a statement.
OPM has been trying to modernize its retirement processes since the 1980s. The agency called the move away from paper a “cornerstone” of DOGE, although work to develop the online application predates the current administration.
The HR agency appears to have started developing its Online Retirement Application by 2023 at the latest, as OPM’s fiscal 2024 budget request — dated March 2023 — noted that the ORA was in development. The agency was testing the online system in a limited capacity by early 2024, according to news reports.
Musk has emphasized the need for IT modernization in DOGE’s efforts to overhaul government, and his team has pushed to access and connect various government datasets, raising concerns and attracting lawsuits in the process.
“Collaboration win by OPM and DOGE,” read a DOGE post about the online application on X last week.
As for DOGE’s interest in the federal retirement process, Musk said previously that he learned about the paper nature of that process as he was pushing for federal employees to take voluntary retirements. DOGE has played a key role in the administration’s efforts to shrink the size of the federal workforce.
OPM was one of the early agencies DOGE landed in after Trump took office, and since January, staff across various OPM offices have been laid off, including employees in its Chief Technology Office and procurement office.
