House Democrats are pressing the Office of Personnel Management for answers on how the agency is addressing abnormally high volumes of federal retirement applications that are inundating the government\u2019s processing systems.<\/p>\n
In a letter<\/a> sent Monday, a group of lawmakers raised concerns about the delays retiring federal employees are currently experiencing, amid a major retirement influx spurred by the Trump administration\u2019s deferred resignation program (DRP).<\/p>\n \u201cThis foreseeable and avoidable administrative failure is the clear result of an administration that has prioritized a purge of the federal civil service over government efficiency, leaving thousands of federal employees in administrative and financial limbo,\u201d the lawmakers wrote in the Dec. 22 letter, obtained by Federal News Network.<\/p>\n The letter from Democrats, led by Rep. James Walkinshaw (D-Va.), comes in direct response to reporting<\/a> last week from Federal News Network, which showed that many retiring federal employees are facing significant delays on their applications, while being left in limbo with limited information from their agencies. Some are still waiting for their retirement payments to kick in, months after officially separating from government.<\/p>\n ]]><\/p>\n \u201cThis surge of applications caused by the administration\u2019s policies has now overwhelmed agency HR offices and payroll providers before many cases even reach OPM, a bottleneck the administration should have anticipated and planned for if it were serious about efficiency,\u201d the Democrats wrote.<\/p>\n The lawmakers, who are all members of House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, called for OPM Director Scott Kupor to explain how OPM has been handling the retirement surge, and how it has been working with agencies who are facing delays of their own in processing retirement applications.<\/p>\n The committee Democrats are giving Kupor until Jan. 29 to detail how OPM has been helping agencies manage the processing challenges, how OPM plans to assess the impacts of HR staffing reductions, and how the application surge has affected customer service. The letter also calls for detailed data on how many agencies and payroll providers have been onboarded onto OPM\u2019s new retirement platform.<\/p>\n \u201cFederal employees, who devoted decades to careers in public service and provided valuable, non-political expertise to federal agencies now find themselves trapped in a prolonged cycle of delayed payments and benefits, lost paperwork, limited communication, and financial and administrative uncertainty,\u201d the lawmakers wrote.<\/p>\n An OPM spokesperson did not immediately respond to Federal News Network\u2019s request for comment.<\/p>\n Earlier this year, OPM launched a new platform, called the online retirement application (ORA), as a way to modernize the government\u2019s paper-based retirement processing system. Agency officials have said<\/a> the new ORA platform has been crucial over the past several months for managing the unusually high volumes of applications \u2014 something that would have been \u201cextremely difficult\u201d in the legacy system. In November, OPM reported that about one-third of incoming retirement applications were digital, and two-thirds were paper-based.<\/p>\n Although the lawmakers said OPM\u2019s modernization efforts are \u201cnecessary,\u201d they argued that the ORA is \u201cinsufficient\u201d in addressing the immediate-term challenges of lower HR staffing, coupled with larger retirement volumes driven by the Trump administration\u2019s DRP.<\/p>\n ]]><\/p>\n \u201cAs a result, retiring employees are often unable to reach already overburdened HR staff to correct errors, confirm receipt of paperwork or obtain basic status updates,\u201d the lawmakers wrote. \u201cThis further compounds delays and administrative failures across the retirement process.\u201d<\/p>\n Currently, OPM is far above its typical retirement workload due to the DRP, and seeing slower processing times as a result. In October and November combined, OPM took in nearly 44,000 retirement applications from agencies \u2014 more than triple the volume OPM saw at that time in 2024. The time it takes for OPM to process an application and finalize a retiree\u2019s annuity has also continued to increase for most of 2025.<\/p>\n Along with OPM, agencies are also seeing slowdowns in their HR processing work, as they are required to review retiring employees\u2019 applications before forwarding them to OPM.<\/p>\n A second wave of federal retirement applications is also expected imminently \u2014 something that will further flood the government\u2019s processing systems in the coming months.<\/p>\n