Office of Personnel Management

Retirement and Insurance Group

1920 1954 1959 1986 

 

Benefits Administration Letter

 Number: 96-712 Date: December 13, 1996 

SUBJECT: Retirement Information and Materials Available from the OPM

Home Page on the World Wide Web.

___________________________________________________________________________

PURPOSE This letter announces that the Office of Personnel Management

has made various retirement-related materials available on the

World Wide Web (WWW).

BACKGROUND Some retirement-related materials have been published on the

WWW to assist agencies and employees who have Internet

Service Providers (ISP) with immediate access to the various

brochures and information. More items will be added soon.

FORMATS Retirement-related materials are available in the Portable

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

Acrobat Reader. The brochures are also available in

WordPerfect 5.1 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 Retirement Programs Home Page can be accessed by using

the Index to find the subject area of interest and clicking your

mouse on the hyper text link letter. Alternatively, the

Retirement Programs Home Page can be accessed by pointing

your WWW browser at the Uniform Resource Locator (URL)-

http://www.opm.gov/retire

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 Retirement Programs Home

Page may be forwarded to Retirement Program offices from

links available at the bottom of the page.

ALTERNATIVE Retirement and insurance materials are also available on the

ACCESS OPM Mainstreet Bulletin Board Service (BBS). OPM

Mainstreet can be reached with a computer and modem by

calling (202) 606-4800.

Please note that the OPM Mainsteet Bulletin Board Service will

continue in service as a supplement for agencies and other

customers. The BBS will not discontinue service with the

advent of the OPM Home Page and the associated retirement

and insurance pages.

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