OPM Proposed Rules for Electronic Retirement System
Office of Personnel Management (OPM) has proposed rules to authorize the Agency to process retirement and health and life insurance applications, notices, elections, and records under the agency’s Retirement Systems Modernization (RSM) project.
The rules would affect how benefits are managed under the Civil Service Retirement System (CSRS), the Federal Employees’ Retirement System (FERS), Federal Employees’ Group Life Insurance (FEGLI), Federal Employees Health Benefits (FEHB) and Retired Federal Employees Health Benefits (RFEHB) programs.Under the new rules, GSA employees would be the first of several waves of conversions to the system, beginning in February 2008. It appears OPM would like the system to be available to all Federal employees by February 2009.
One substantive change identified in the rules: employees (or survivors) would have 35 days from the date of their notice of retirement to change any survivor benefit elections. Current regulations set the deadline for changing survivor elections to the date of the first regular monthly payment or final adjudication.
You can read the new rules by clicking on this link. If you care to comment on the new rules, you must do so by September 17, 2007.
