LESTER HOLT: Back now with a major DOGE project: upgrading the federal retirement system. For decades, retirement requests have been requested entirely on paper in an old limestone mine. Our Garrett Haake has been granted rare and exclusive access inside.
GARRETT HAAKE: Very deep inside this mine in western Pennsylvania is a little known government office that handles a critical mission for the federal workforce. Now set to be overhauled by the Department of Government Efficiency.
From the mine entrance which they call The Portal, we took some golf carts a few hundred feet down into the mine. You can feel the air change when you get inside, and you can see this is all just roughly cut out of the limestone. This was once a limestone mine. And down here, this is where we find the OPM office where a few hundred federal employees process all retirement paperwork for the entire federal government.
It’s an analog operation, all done on paper. It can take months for the Office of Personnel Management to process a case, potentially delaying retiree benefits. The facility has literally miles of files. Some 26,000 filing cabinets filled with retirement paperwork. Some of them stacked ten high. Matt MacIsaac runs the day-to-day operations inside.
When you look out over all of this, what do you see?
MATT MacISAAC: I see people. I see careers. I see service.
ELON MUSK: …you know, like, what do you mean, a mine?
HAAKE: When Elon Musk brought the mine in an Oval Office appearance back in February as a target ripe for reform, MacIsaac agreed.
MacISAAC: He's right. We have to improve the way that we do things for federal employees and for the American public.
HAAKE: Musk asked billionaire AirBnB co-founder Joe Gebbia to take on the project of modernizing not just the mine's operation, but the entire retirement system.
When you look at a project like this, where do you even start?
JOE GEBBIA: Well, how about here on File Cabinet 56?
HAAKE: Gebbia says DOGE engineers are working to create a fully digital experience with federal retirees being hopeful, happy customers.
GEBBIA: Why can't we have an Apple Store-like experience in the government- where you have great user experience, beautiful design, and up-to-date software?
HAAKE: Aiming to upgrade a process long seemingly set in stone. Garrett Haake, NBC News, Boyers, Pennsylvania.