Update: Norton had the meeting with the FRTIB director.
Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) is seeking an “urgent phone call” with the Executive Director of the Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board (FRTIB) to discuss the problems that federal employees and retirees have encountered stemming from the rollout of the new TSP website at the start of June.
Norton said that she asked for the meeting after hearing from her constituents “about additional problems they are having with the new [TSP] system, including information not being properly transferred and taxes not being properly allocated.”
She said in a statement:
The Thrift Savings Plan is so essential to federal employees and retirees that the Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board must immediately fix the problems with the new online system. That is why I have requested an urgent phone call with the Executive Director of FRTIB. Constituents have told me of phone wait times of over nine hours, of disconnected calls, and of missing and incorrect information in their accounts. I appreciate my constituents bringing these consequential concerns to my attention, and I will continue to work to fix these issues.
Norton sent a letter to the FRTIB earlier this month in which she said that a number of her constituents had said that they were unable to access their TSP information and investments and also could not get through to the TSP’s customer service helpline for assistance after the rollout of the changes to the new TSP website. She asked the FRTIB for an explanation of the cause of the problems and what was being done to fix them as well as steps the agency had taken to prepare for and roll out the new system.
She received a response within a few days from FRTIB Executive Director Ravindra Deo which admitted that the number of calls to the TSP’s customer support line was higher than expected after the website upgrades but that many more support agents have been added to handle the call volume. The letter also explained why the changes had been made and outline progress made in addressing the problems.
Norton said that she was not satisfied with the agency’s response to her letter.
“While the FRTIB’s response expounds on the transition and benefits of the new TSP online system, it does not address the questions I posed in my letter. Nor does it address the problems my constituents are having accessing their TSP accounts,” she said in a statement.
In addition to the other inquiries she has apparently continued to receive from her constituents, this is also likely why she would like to meet with Deo.
FRTIB Reports on Progress of TSP Updates
At its June meeting, the FRTIB shared a lot of information about the new TSP website project: what the changes were and why they were being made, what the FRTIB hoped to accomplish with the changes, new features that were included with the upgrades and the status of dealing with the problems that had arisen in conjunction with the rollout of the changes to the TSP system.
FedSmith author Ralph Smith provides a full summary in his article published earlier today. As he wrote, “The changes to the system are significant and impact all TSP investors. It may ease some of the frustration and answer some questions posed by readers to understand the most significant changes and why the decision was made to undertake these major changes to underlying structure of the existing TSP program.”
