Office of Personnel Management

Retirement and Insurance Group

1920

1954

1959

1986

Benefits Administration Letter

Number: 96-711	Date: December 3, 1996

SUBJECT:	1996 Federal Employees Health Benefit Open Season Materials Available from the OPM Home Page on the World Wide Web.

___________________________________________________________________________

PURPOSE	This letter announces that the Office of Personnel Management has made all 1996 Federal Employees Health Benefit (FEHB) Open Season materials available on the World Wide Web (WWW).

BACKGROUND	The 1996 FEHB Open Season is being held from November 11, 1996 through December 9, 1996. Open Season materials have been published on the WWW to assist agencies and employees who have Internet Service Providers (ISP) with immediate access to the FEHB Guides and Plan Brochures.

The FEHB Guide and Plan Brochures will continue to be available through the OPM WWW Home Page after the Open Season ends on December 9, 1996.

FORMATS	The Guide and Plan Brochures are available in the Portable Document Format (PDF) for viewing on-line with the Adobe Acrobat Reader. The Guide and Brochures are also available in WordPerfect 5.1 (for DOS) format for downloading to local computer hard drives.

WWW LOCATION	The OPM Home Page is accessed by pointing your WWW browser at the Uniform Resource Locator (URL)-

http://www.opm.gov

The Insurance Home Page can be accessed by clicking your mouse on the hyper text link titled-

Federal Employees Health Benefits Open Season

After the Open Season closes, the FEHB Guide and Plan Brochures will be accessible through the Index on the OPM Home Page.

FEEDBACK	Agencies and employees are encouraged to provide feedback to OPM so that services can be improved to meet their needs.

Email messages about the OPM Home Page may be forwarded to the OPM Webmaster from a link available at the bottom of the page. Messages concerning the FEHB Open Season may be forwarded to Insurance Program offices from links available at the bottom of the Insurance Home Page.

ALTERNATIVE	The FEHB Open Season materials are also available on the

ACCESS	OPM Mainsteet Bulletin Board Service (BBS). OPM Mainstreet can be reached with a computer and modem by calling (202) 606 4800. The Open Season files are available in the Retirement and Insurance Forum of the BBS.

EMAIL PILOT	We will explore the option of sending future Benefits

PROJECT	Administration Letters and other guidance directly to agency

headquarters level Benefits Officers who can receive internet email. This will provide our customers with the additional flexibility of receiving guidance directly in electronic format so that it may stored on a local personal computer and/or reprinted on local printers. This will also allow Benefits Officers to forward original OPM guidance immediately to other agency personnel with access to internal or internet email.

Agency headquarters level Benefits Officers who have internet email capability should send a short internet email expressing their interest in receiving benefits information electronically to-

asd@opm.gov

It is important to note that OPM uses UUENCODE/ UUDECODE to encode and decode attachments as ASCII documents. If your system uses another protocol, we will provide advice on how you may convert our documents for your local use.

Mary M. Sugar, Chief

Agency Services Division