The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) has released three new videos that will walk federal retirees through certain aspects of navigating their online retirement services accounts.
The videos focus on account access, specifically how to:
- Register for a Login.gov account through OPM Retirement Services Online
- Access and link a Services Online account with existing Login.gov credentials
- Reset a Services Online account if the 8-digit code is lost
OPM Director Kiran Ahuja said in a statement, “The purpose of these videos is to reduce login errors for federal retirees managing their retirement accounts online, and to improve responsiveness by reducing wait times at our call centers. Our goal is to make this transition for federal employees as easy as possible.”
OPM announced last year that the OPM Retirement Services Online website would require using Login.gov to access the website as of May 26, 2022. The purpose of the change was to improve the security of federal retirees’ personal information.
What is Login.gov?
The Login.gov website states that it is a service that allows the public to “Use one account for secure, private access to participating government agencies.” It further adds:
Login.gov is a secure sign in service used by the public to sign in to participating government agencies. Participating agencies will ask you to create a Login.gov account to securely access your information on their website or application.
You can use the same username and password to access any agency that partners with Login.gov. This streamlines your process and eliminates the need to remember multiple usernames and passwords.
Think of it as the government’s comparable solution to a single sign-on process similar to what you would use if you log into a website using your Google or Twitter account instead of creating a new, separate username and password for that particular website. The idea is to simplify the process by having one less account to manage and enhancing security since your email, password, etc. have already been established and verified by the controlling website (Google or Twitter in this example).
