Federal Retirement Applications to Go All Digital in Weeks; OPM-Workday Contract Abruptly Canceled

The retirement application process for federal employees is going all-digital in the coming weeks, as the federal government formally ditches that paper process that has been blamed for slowing down worker retirements.  

The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) said that starting June 2, 2025, all retirement applications from agencies served by the National Finance Center and Interior Business Center, two federal shared services providers, must be submitted electronically. And starting July 15, 2025, OPM will only facilitate applications made through OPM’s Online Retirement Application (ORA). 

If an agency does not use either shared services provider, then OPM will provide a complementary method for electronic submissions.

In a memo announcing the change, Office of Personnel Management (OPM) Acting Director Charles Ezell said that federal retirement has “advanced to the digital age” and that the new process will be “ fast, user-friendly, and responsive to the needs of our employees.”

 “The federal workforce deserves a retirement process that matches the demands of the 21st century,” wrote Acting Director Ezell. “Legacy systems, with outdated technology and cumbersome procedures, have delayed retirements and frustrated employees who have dedicated their careers to public service.”

The announcement comes just three months after OPM processed the first all-digital retirement application. 

DOGE’s Role

The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and its de facto leader Elon Musk played a key role in moving the retirement process online, with Musk saying that the paper process was delaying retirement for months, even calling out the federal government for processing the applications by hand in an old mine in Pennsylvania. Following the all-digital news, Musk wrote on X, the platform he owns, "Retirement is now digital, so much faster and more accurate! Nice work by many."

DOGE was given the task as part of President Trump’s executive order that implemented DOGE. The DOGE team worked closely with OPM to fast forward the digital transition. 

To make the switch happen, training and onboarding will be provided to all participating agencies. The training must be completed by June 2, 2025. OPM will also coordinate directly with payroll providers to ensure all agencies will have access to ORA in the near future.

Pace of New Retirements Slows from Winter Rush

Meanwhile, figures show that just over 7,800 federal employees filed for retirement in March, with 8,300 filing in April. Those numbers are dramatically lower than the 16,000 workers that filed in January and the 9,600 that filed in February as the Trump Administration took over. Overall, more than 33,500 federal employees retired in the first quarter of 2025 compared to 29,700 during the first three months of 2024. 

OPM is making progress on the retirement backlog, which fell to 16,700 in April. That’s almost 4,000 lower than March, but higher than OPM’s goal of no more than 13,000 claims pending at one time. 

Average processing time is 54 days, down from 61 at the same point in 2024. Applications that took less than 60 days for the agency to get OPM the paperwork were processed in an average of 33 days. 

Workday Contract Canceled

Meanwhile, OPM abruptly canceled its contract with HR technology provider Workday, less than a week after it was announced. The $342,000 Workday contract had been awarded without a competitive bidding process to overhaul OPM’s HR technology. 

In its original justification, OPM said the single-source contract was needed to avoid delays and to get the new technology up and running as fast as possible. OPM did not comment on why the contract was terminated. 

According to Washington Technology, workers who would have to integrate the systems were not happy.

“They (integrators) raised a fit,” one industry source told WashTech.