How we automated federal retirements
ndstudio.gov
ndstudio.gov
Without this, this effort would not have been possible.
> Fortunately, we stumbled on a critical clue. While poring over old documentation, we discovered that OPM actually had data warehouses that stored historic information about every federal employee. Apparently, these warehouses were created as part of a modernization effort in 2007, and HR and payroll offices all across government have supposedly been regularly reporting into it.
> For some reason however, this was not well known at OPM, and those that knew about it didn’t know what data it held, nor considered how it could be used to simplify retirement processing. Not many had seen the data, and administrators were initially resistant to sharing access.
> From a software perspective, this was the holy grail: a single source of truth that held all the information that the manual redundant steps were meant to review. Because the information was regularly reported by HR and payroll, by the time an employee retired, OPM should already have everything needed to process the retirement, without anyone re-entering or re-verifying information.
Nobody believes the database sprung forth from the earth or was created accidentally. The fact that 18 years later that project had borne no visible fruit, and that most people who could have used it, didn’t even know about it, is proof of the problem. It’s a problem of terrible management. That is what, regardless of your politics, is being slightly jostled by DOGE. Personally I have dealt with enough of our absurd government processes that I don’t think they can make anything much worse, and it cannot be less efficient.
I’m sure in reality the people who built this system were smart, and wanted people to use it, but were just buried under layers of technology-unaware management and bureaucrats who felt threatened, afraid it would marginalize or eliminate their paper-pushing jobs. But this very likely reality is just more proof that the government needs significant restructuring. Most people in management at the government are there purely because of tenure, not because they’re great leaders, nor subject matter experts in how complex things are efficiently built and run outside the government world.
1. That’s a whole extra level of responsibility / management / bureaucracy. At some point, somebody near the top needs to care or it doesn’t all get done. The existence of this DB says somebody cared, they just didn’t have enough power.
2. I’m curious how this compares to experiences at Big Old Corp, like IBM or GM, not just the SV darlings.
Written by said engineers about themselves. It's hard to read this as little more than a long-winded self-congratulatory Twitter post before the results are actually visible. It's no wonder their social handles sit at the bottom of the page to funnel followers to their page.
> With the system online, there were still many improvements to be made. Like taxes, applying for retirement was still an incredibly confusing process. Working closely with talented designers and the Retirement Services team at OPM, we set out to reinvent the user experience from end-to-end.
Complaining that the writer took all the credit seems a bit petty.
18F: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/18F Overview of the related programs: https://willslack.com/pif-18f-usds/
(A warning about Odd Lots: the hosts never question or push back on people talking their book. This especially bad with politicians and political appointees, who are often very creative during their interviews.)
> When we met with the developers in Macon, Georgia, OPM's engineering hub, they told us the PowerApps experience was so unfriendly that even they were afraid to make changes. Unless they’ve been specifically trained with PowerApps, most software developers would find it extremely unintuitive to build with, making it hard to apply classic coding skills or iterate quickly.
How much longer is it going to take project managers to realize that no-code tools are inappropriate for large, complex codebases?
Really depends. It can work great, I see some really good No/Low code tools in ERP systems. Things like alerts, workflows, custom fields, actions, etc are... you would be surprised the ingenuity of people, but also - yes there are limits.
An ERP is practically an opinionated entire operating system with its own data, conventions, rules, ACLs, etc...
But I wouldn’t build the foundation of an ERP system on stuff like that. I think you’re describing a scripting interface, rather than the core?
What i am talking about is more simple
1. user defined actions. 2. common triggers (object X Save, object Y delete) 2. user defined fields on core data tables 3. user defined tables
You can go very far with that, and a drop into a VB script, or run a prebuilt action (IE some verb on the object, like "print this document" on Save)
If the project you're implementing is Big (which the federal employee retirement system qualifies for by any sane metric), then the infra you described is inappropriate. If the project isn't Big, then my comment wasn't addressing it.
Federal retirement processing has slowed substantially this year due to DRP. As OPM continues modernizing retirement systems, another application surge looms.
https://federalnewsnetwork.com/retirement/2025/12/in-the-dar...
They seem to think the new systems helped:
> Amid the application influx, the Office of Personnel Management has also rolled out a major effort this year to modernize the legacy federal retirement system, which has long been paper-based. Many experts see the launch of OPM’s online retirement application (ORA) as a long-awaited improvement, but some remain wary of the timing, as agencies face application volumes not seen in at least a decade.
> Thiago Glieger, a federal retirement planning expert at RMG Advisors, described the converging changes as “uncharted waters” for OPM.
> “OPM has not really handled this new [ORA] system before, and this many federal employees retiring all at the same time,” he told Federal News Network.
> But Kimya Lee, OPM’s deputy associate director for Retirement Services, said having the ORA platform available this year has been crucial for managing both current and upcoming waves of retirement applications.
> “A surge like this would be extremely difficult for our legacy processing to work — it just wasn’t built for something like this,” Lee said during a Dec. 9 Chief Human Capital Officers (CHCO) Council meeting. “Despite record high retirement volumes this year, ORA is performing well. This gives us confidence as we prepare for retirement activities in 2025 and into 2026.”
Does anyone have a scoop on NDS? Is it composed of 18F staffers?
US Digital Service (USDS) was also "renamed" and turned into DOGE (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Digital_Service).
So on the surface it seems that we already had many of these types of orgs, but they killed them all and spun up their own renamed and rebadged versions.
That being said, this project does seem like a potential big win.
Sounds just like Sharepoint.
Sigh...
> Aug 21 (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump will appoint Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia to spearhead the new National Design Studio that will seek to make digital services at federal agencies more efficient, two officials familiar with the plan said.
> Trump signed an executive order on Thursday to create the studio - a new body that one of the officials said appears to be a stripped-down successor to the controversial Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), formerly headed by billionaire Elon Musk.
The work described in this blog post seems to have been done under its predecessor, DOGE, given that the launch date was June 2. But apparently these engineers moved to the new organization, so that’s why the blog post is there.
So, amazing collaboration between the George W Bush & Trump admins.
I am glad everyone here is applauding the achievement.
Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community.
Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.
It can also be seen as ideological battle or flamebait; though with terse one-liners it's hard to tell what's really meant.
It would be much better to share your perspective on what is good about the article, and at least try to persuade those who will be predisposed to be opposed to it to instead see the positives in it.