Elon Musk on Tuesday referenced an old limestone mine, a completely similar system, that federal employee's retirement papers go its way. It's authentic and the retirement application is on paper.
In rural areas of western Pennsylvania, hundreds of federal workers sit in a basement about 230 feet underground, where it's their job to process thousands of applications each month. They work at the Human Resources Management Retirement Operations Center in Boyers, Pennsylvania, about 50 miles north of Pittsburgh.
“All resignation documents are on paper and manual,” Musk said. “It's like a time warp… doesn't it sound crazy?”
Musk commented from the oval office where President Donald Trump signed an executive order to reduce the size of his government's workforce. The newly created government efficiency of the high-tech billionaires launched a federal onslaught, cutting several divisions and funds in the weeks since Trump took office.
On Tuesday, it was the first time Musk had been asked a question in public since joining the Trump administration.
more:Five Ways Elon Musk is Working on Destroying the Federal Government
“Many people need to work for the federal government, but not as many as they are now,” Musk argued. “Instead of working with a mine shaft that transports Manila envelopes to a box of mine shafts, you will actually be able to do anything and add it to your US goods and services in a more useful way.”
What we know about this limestone mine
The converted mines are home to many domestic businesses and storage facilities for the US government. Land Use Interpretation Centre. It has been owned by the Iron Mountain Company since the late 1990s, and was previously owned by US steel, which was excavated for limestone in Mills in the Pittsburgh area.
The government has the federal investigation service and Patent and Trademark Office. Since the 1970s, personnel management employees have been working on the process. Increased number of retirement files Create storage space for these records, according to 2016 Government Services Bureau documents.
2014 Washington Post Report Process details: Paper files are brought to the mines every day by truck, employees pass by hand through the cave, head to the cave, and cross all lines of employee data. All this, despite several expensive attempts over the years with some form of automation, reported by the Post. As of 2014, several managers had already spent at least $100 million over 30 years automating efforts.
How long does it take for federal workers to retire?
OPM aims to process applications within 60 days and has a backlog of less than 13,000 raw applications at a time. We achieved our average processing time target for five months of five out of the last 16 months and backlog targets for those months. data.
In January 2025, OPM received 16,000 new retirement claims and processed 6,700. Resignation applications will usually flow in January. The previous month, OPM received 5,020 and processed 4,988. Even when we processed roughly the same amount as what we received in December, OPM stock was over 13,800 outstanding bills.
2023 Report Three causes of looseness have been discovered by the OPM inspector's office. It's a reliance on paper-based applications, inadequate staffing, and incomplete applications. If there is an error, inconsistency, or missing information, the report found that a request can take more than 100 days on average.
In recent years, there are hints that OPM hopes to completely modernize the process. In 2014, this post found that some of the processes were done by computers. Last summer, Federal News Network The department reported that it was testing pilot online retirement applications.
However, the full modernization process could still be several years away as of the 2023 Inspector General Report.
“OPM evaluates how we can improve the efficiency of our retirement application processing in Boyer, Pennsylvania. Our goal is to better serve federal employees and American people.”
