CAMBRIDGE, Md. — The Office of Personnel Management is hiring a new leader to take charge of its languishing retirement systems modernization program.

OPM Director John Berry told reporters at the Interagency Resources Management Conference here that a panel is reviewing candidates.

"I'm hopeful that I can find a superstar that can really be the change agent, and say ‘What direction do we need to go here to come up with an automated system?'" he said.

The government will probably never be able to fully automate retirement benefit processing for all employees. Federal employees with complicated work histories — such as reservists who have fought in several conflicts — will probably need to have their pensions calculated by hand, he said.

"Coming up with one system to automate this is probably never going to work," Berry said. "We're starting instead with, how can we handle the bulk of cases, and go until you hit a point where there's diminishing returns. At some point, there's going to be a set of cases you're just going to have to do by hand."

But Berry is confident OPM can come up with a calculator to handle the standard, uncomplicated annuity calculations, which he estimated would make up 60 percent to 70 percent of retirements. OPM employees and contractors are working on a simplified calculator that the agency's Office of Inspector General will help test.

Berry hopes that a basic retirement calculator and a new leader for the retirement modernization effort will be in place by 2011. Then, Berry wants OPM to broaden the calculator to encompass more employees.

"What is the next 10 to 20 percent we can bring under this net?" Berry said. "My approach is that whittling process. Not some magic, wave a wand, this is going to solve every case."

Agencies still are digitizing employees' paper records, Berry said. OPM has instructed them to focus their efforts on employees who are less than a decade away from retirement.