How Did Federal Retirement Drop to 60 Seconds?

Joe Gebbia says a basic federal retirement dropped from six months on paper to 60 seconds when the Online Retirement Application, called ORA, launched on August 1st and every new retirement in the federal government started flowing through that software with no new paper.

The federal government has 2.3 million employees and 100,000 retire every year. He jokes the old paper process is like a retention program. People miss a signature field or a checkbox, learn about it only at the end, months later, and have to start over, so some stay another year and wait for a digital solution. Work started from a prototype called Julie. The next 20 people had basic retirements because they worked for one agency, and processing times were remarkably faster than on paper. The next 20 led to a full rewrite of software OPM had been building. Iteration and user testing with HR, payroll, applicants, and OPM shaped ORA into a highly usable, intuitive product built to reduce customer service calls.

All agencies and all employees now submit through the software. New retirement paper is no longer filed in a mine somewhere deep in the earth. The retirement process is a digital experience built to fix a problem that haunted the government for many decades.