Wait Until You See How the Federal Government Stores Retirement Files

Katie Pavlich | February 12, 2025 4:30 PM

As Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency team continue to look through the books of the federal government, they're learning about how the bureaucracy functions...or rather, doesn't.

Take for example how the federal government processes retirement paperwork for employees.

"Federal employee retirements are processed using paper, by hand, in an old limestone mine in Pennsylvania. 700+ mine workers operate 230 feet underground to process ~10,000 applications per month, which are stored in manila envelopes and cardboard boxes. The retirement process takes multiple months," DOGE reveals.

During remarks to reporters in the Oval Office Tuesday, Musk detailed how slow the process is.

I can’t believe this is real. pic.twitter.com/y47RsNYrXN
— Justin Hart (@justin_hart) February 11, 2025

Maybe it’s just me, but I think there is room for improvement here https://t.co/gQqx3sAOyZ
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 12, 2025

More details, from STWServe:

If one was curious enough to look for answers regarding why the process is so arduous, he or she may find themselves at Iron Mountain in Boyers, PA. There, 600 OPM employees work 230 feet underground in an old limestone mine dealing with truckloads of paperwork. Literally, since the 1960s, several trucks bring boxes and boxes of paperwork for hundreds of Federal Government workers on a daily basis. The reason for the peculiar location and facility is not secrecy or security, but space. To handle the demands of the largest employer in the country, there needs to be room for all of those forms as the process is still weighed down by physical files and documents. Even what is performed on a computer must be printed out and filed away within the catacomb-like aisles of untouched filing cabinets.
The system attempted digitization in the early 1980s, but those in charge faced so many complications, the agency didn’t try again until the late 1990s. After failing to get a system built themselves, the Government turned to contractors, who had a computer-based system in place to go live by 2008. Alarms flashed the year prior, though, as the digital system had an overall success rate of just 18% when evaluated on how many test claims had been completed sufficiently. $106 million later, the OPM facility resumed functioning with the processes established back in 1977. And such analog systems are still in use today. After reaching a historic low of 156 days for average claim processing time, goals were set in 2013 to maintain an inventory of 13,000 and an average completion time of 60 days. For the most part, the 60 days has long been the standard, but the inventory only rarely approaches the 13,000 mark and often hovers around the 16-20,000 range.