by Gregory Korte
The federal personnel agency has launched an online system for processing retirement applications, ending a paper-based method that had remained largely unchanged for decades.
The rollout is one of the more tangible changes from a larger effort to modernize government operations under the Department of Government Efficiency, a high-profile initiative championed early on by Elon Musk and other tech figures brought into the administration. President Donald Trump cited the project as one of DOGE’s top accomplishments as Musk wrapped his stint as a special government employee at the White House last week.
The Office of Personnel Management’s new retirement portal went live on Monday. Most federal employees starting the retirement process will be required to use it right away, with paper forms being phased out for others by July 15, according to a memo from acting OPM Director Charles Ezell.
“People have given decades of their life to the government — 30-plus years — and they go to retire and they’re met with an obstacle course,” said Joe Gebbia, a co-founder of Airbnb Inc. and one of many people from the tech and finance world brought in to help with the effort.
The new system is intended to streamline a process long criticized for its delays and dependence on manual paperwork. The retirement process now takes as long as four to six months, with retirees living on a reduced pension payment while a sprawling bureaucracy collects information to calculate the amount of the annuity.
That old system relied on federal workers at a former limestone mine in Pennsylvania, a facility that still houses millions of retirement records and became a metaphor for the government’s digital shortcomings.
That paperwork will still be maintained for current retirees, but any new retirements must be initiated electronically. “Paper will be around for a long time. It’s a matter of not creating new paper,” Gebbia said.
About 100,000 federal employees retire every year, and the Trump administration has encouraged many workers to leave early through various early retirement programs.
Career OPM staffers worked alongside DOGE to make the overhaul happen, Gebbia said.
He said new system was as much a design challenge as a technical one, with the agency trying to ensure that the system was easy to use for retirees, agencies and the government’s in-house payroll processors. For too long, he said, the federal government has been operating in what he called a “design desert.”
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