During a joint Oval Office press conference with President Donald Trump, Elon Musk revealed a little-known bureaucratic hurdle within the federal government: no more than 10,000 employees can retire each month due to an outdated, manual paperwork process handled in an underground facility in Pennsylvania.
The facility in question is Iron Mountain, a 330,000-square-foot data center located more than 200 feet underground. It houses federal personnel records and plays a critical role in processing retirement paperwork—a task still largely performed by hand.
A Legacy of Inefficiency
According to Musk, the speed of the facility’s mine shaft elevator effectively determines how quickly retirement paperwork can be completed. This outdated system persists despite a $106 million effort spanning decades to modernize the process. A 2021 report found that the government ultimately reverted to manual processing methods first established in 1977, underscoring the challenge of transitioning federal agencies away from legacy systems.
Mediaite’s Sarah Rumpf fact-checked Musk’s comments and found a 2014 Washington Post article by investigative journalist David Fahrenthold, in which he famously dubbed the facility the “Sinkhole of Bureaucracy.”
Fahrenthold’s article described the limestone mine in Boyers, Pennsylvania as “one of the weirdest workplaces in the U.S. government — both for where it is and for what it does.” The town about 60 miles north of Pittsburgh has hosted this unusual government facility since the mid-twentieth century, and much of the technology used in the office seems to date from that era.
At the time Fahrenthold was reporting on this over a decade ago, there were 600 employees of the Office of Personnel Management that processed the retirement paperwork for the entire federal workforce in this facility that boasts “eight massive file caverns.”
The history of this underground office dates back to the late 1950s, when the federal government was looking for additional storage space and was alerted to this abandoned mine in Boyers, which had been bought by a private company and essentially turned into “an enormous safe-deposit box: safe from the weather and the Soviets, kept naturally cool as a cave.” That naturally preservative climate and secure location has continued to be a benefit to this day. The complex is owned by document company Iron Mountain, which also leases space in caverns adjacent to the OPM offices to be used for preserving old Hollywood movie reels and photographic archives.
NEW: Elon Musk says the maximum amount of people who can retire from the federal government in a month is 10,000 because the paperwork is done manually at an old limestone mine in Pennsylvania.
— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) February 11, 2025
The mine in question is Iron Mountain.
"The speed at which the mine shaft elevator… pic.twitter.com/rgjDqoPbL4
James W. Morrison Jr., who oversaw this office under President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s, was shocked when Fahrenthold told him that the system was still managed by shuffling dead trees around. Another decade in and Morrison might have a stronger reaction than the “Wow” he gave the Post in 2014.
Many federal departments continue to rely on outdated infrastructure, creating inefficiencies that slow operations and complicate efforts to integrate modern technology.
Signs of Progress?
Despite these challenges, some government agencies have made baby steps toward modernization. The Department of Veterans Affairs, for example, has improved its service delivery through digital transformation, while the IRS recently piloted its Direct File program to simplify tax filing for Americans.
The contrast between these modernization successes and the continued reliance on decades-old systems highlights the broader struggle of updating government operations—a challenge with significant implications for efficiency, cost and public trust.
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Took me 4 months to receive my government retirement check.