DOGE finally delivers what Elon Musk promised earlier, changing a 'mid-20th century' US govt tradition

Retirement benefits, which have traditionally taken months to process, will soon be delivered much faster, thanks to a major digital overhaul announced by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

In a post on X, DOGE revealed that as of June 2, the government has officially adopted online digital retirement as the new standard through Retire.opm.gov. The initiative was described as a major milestone achieved in partnership with the Office of Personnel Management (OPM).

“On June 2, online digital retirement became the government standard! Great teamwork by OPM and DOGE,” the department posted. “Next up (end of July): getting the first retirement benefit payments to retirees faster (currently takes multiple months). Will report back in July!”

In a follow-up post, DOGE added: “Collaboration win by @USOPM and @DOGE: After 35+ years of failed modernization attempts, OPM has announced that, as of June 2, they are replacing their 65+ year-old paper process with an all-digital alternative. This will reduce the average time people wait to receive their retirement check from 3–5 months to less than 1 month.”

The digital transformation drew praise from former DOGE head Elon Musk, who has long criticized the antiquated retirement processing system.


“Great work turning a lengthy paperwork retirement process into a simple digital one!” Musk wrote on X.
Musk previously spotlighted the slow pace of retirement processing for federal employees, especially the manual system based in an underground limestone mine in Boyers, Pennsylvania.

The Limestone Mine and Decades of Delay

Located about 45 miles north of Pittsburgh, the facility is managed by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) and has handled government retirement paperwork by hand since the mid-20th century.

Despite multiple efforts to digitize the system dating back to 1987, the process has remained largely unchanged. The facility can process only 10,000 retirement applications per month due to the labor-intensive, manual methods still in use.

“Well, because all that retirement paperwork is manual on paper. It’s manually calculated. Then it goes down a mine — and I mean a literal mine,” Musk once remarked, highlighting the inefficiency of the system. “Yeah, there’s a limestone mine where we store all the retirement paperwork.”

The mine was originally owned by US Steel, which operated it between 1902 and 1952. By 1960, the U.S. government began using it for record storage. In 1998, Iron Mountain took over ownership and has continued to lease the space to federal agencies.