Dear Federal Employee:

It is with great pleasure that I announce that today the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) is initiating the rollout of the Federal Government's new retirement administration process. Employees from Wave 1 agencies like yours will now be able to retire under a system, which will be known as RetireEZ, that will quickly and accurately calculate their retirement benefits.

We are beginning the implementation with employing agencies whose payroll is handled by the General Services Administration (GSA). This population includes OPM, GSA, the National Archives and Records Administration, the National Credit Union Administration, the Railroad Retirement Board and other GSA-serviced agencies and is approximately 26,000 active employees. From this point forward, active employees at these agencies who retire will have their retirement benefits calculated in the new environment.

This means you will receive your full annuity at the first payment, rather than after a period of reduced interim payments - eliminating a practice that has disadvantaged new retirees and been a barrier to our ability to achieve the highest level of customer service. This modernization moves Federal agencies from a labor-intensive, paper-based process to a modern, electronic system that contains all the Federal and military service records needed to compute the annuities of Federal employees. Through the use of technology to improve the storage, retrieval and transfer of employment and benefits information, employees will have an easier transition from the workplace to retirement.

Subsequent rollouts of RetireEZ will cover the remainder of the Executive Branch, the U.S. Postal Service and the Legislative and Judicial Branches, with the fifth and final rollout scheduled for February 2009.

Sincerely,

Linda M. Springer
Director