fers retirement classes, federal government retirement seminars

FEHB Modernization is OPM’s Goal

March 6, 2019

[vc_row][vc_column width=”2/3″ el_class=”section section1″][vc_column_text]Contrasting different Federal Employee Health Benefits (FEHB) plans, and then enrolling in them, can be a daunting task, which is why the Office of Personnel and Management (OPM) is currently looking for vendors that can help set up a one-stop shop for all federal employees health care needs. Until February 15th, the RFI was open to inquiries, but March 11th is the date they are open until for responses.

This proposed portal would be used to find coverage for all current and retired federal employees and their families.

To put the need for modernization into perspective, the FEHB currently has 4 million people enrolled in it, with one million transactions each year. Premiums for the FEHB are over $54 billion.

Though the administration of FEHB is overseen by the OPM, things like enrollment and reconciliation, as well as most areas of benefactor’s services are spread out across different avenues in both the federal and private sectors. This complicates the process for most people who have enrolled and is more expensive to run on a technical and administrative level.

To rectify this, the Office of Personnel and Management is looking to streamline much of the current system, including enrollment processing and support, decision support, enrollment and premium reconciliation, and the warehousing and reporting of incoming data.

As the OPM has noted, the Central Enrollment Program (CEP) would be the ideal source for this data reporting, as they are able to show transactional data for all the insurance carriers and related agencies in the entirety of the FEHB.

The OPM is also looking for vendors who have an insight into AI capabilities that can administer multi-factor authentications and real-time data validations, while also giving employees the support and functionality they need.

The OPM is also looking into artificial intelligence that can figure out patterns in data and give an overview to authorized people enrolled in the program, while still complying with all the current regulations like the FISMA, FedRAMP, and NIST guidelines. As technology improves, so should the program.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”36148″ img_size=”292×285″ style=”vc_box_shadow”][/vc_column][/vc_row]