Office of Personnel Management

Retirement and Insurance Group

1920 1954 1959 1986 

 

Benefits Administration Letter

 Number: 96-711 Date: December 3, 1996 

SUBJECT: 1996 Federal Employees Health Benefit Open Season Materials

Available from the OPM Home Page on the World Wide Web.

___________________________________________________________________________

PURPOSE This letter announces that the Office of Personnel Management

has made all 1996 Federal Employees Health Benefit (FEHB)

Open Season materials available on the World Wide Web

(WWW).

BACKGROUND The 1996 FEHB Open Season is being held from November 11,

1996 through December 9, 1996. Open Season materials have

been published on the WWW to assist agencies and employees

who have Internet Service Providers (ISP) with immediate

access to the FEHB Guides and Plan Brochures.

The FEHB Guide and Plan Brochures will continue to be

available through the OPM WWW Home Page after the Open

Season ends on December 9, 1996.

FORMATS The Guide and Plan Brochures are available in the Portable

Document Format (PDF) for viewing on-line with the Adobe

Acrobat Reader. The Guide and Brochures are also available in

WordPerfect 5.1 (for DOS) format for downloading to local

computer hard drives.

WWW LOCATION The OPM Home Page is accessed by pointing your WWW

browser at the Uniform Resource Locator (URL)-

http://www.opm.gov

The Insurance Home Page can be accessed by clicking your

mouse on the hyper text link titledFederal Employees Health Benefits Open Season
2

After the Open Season closes, the FEHB Guide and Plan

Brochures will be accessible through the Index on the OPM

Home Page.

FEEDBACK Agencies and employees are encouraged to provide feedback to

OPM so that services can be improved to meet their needs.

Email messages about the OPM Home Page may be forwarded

to the OPM Webmaster from a link available at the bottom of

the page. Messages concerning the FEHB Open Season may be

forwarded to Insurance Program offices from links available at

the bottom of the Insurance Home Page.

ALTERNATIVE The FEHB Open Season materials are also available on the 

ACCESS OPM Mainsteet Bulletin Board Service (BBS). OPM

Mainstreet can be reached with a computer and modem by

calling (202) 606 4800. The Open Season files are available in

the Retirement and Insurance Forum of the BBS.

EMAIL PILOT We will explore the option of sending future Benefits

PROJECT Administration Letters and other guidance directly to agency

headquarters level Benefits Officers who can receive internet

email. This will provide our customers with the additional

flexibility of receiving guidance directly in electronic format so

that it may stored on a local personal computer and/or reprinted

on local printers. This will also allow Benefits Officers to

forward original OPM guidance immediately to other agency

personnel with access to internal or internet email.

Agency headquarters level Benefits Officers who have internet

email capability should send a short internet email expressing

their interest in receiving benefits information electronically toasd@opm.gov

It is important to note that OPM uses UUENCODE/

UUDECODE to encode and decode attachments as ASCII

documents. If your system uses another protocol, we will

provide advice on how you may convert our documents for

your local use.

Mary M. Sugar, Chief

Agency Services Division