Dear Bureaupat,

I am a relative newbie to government employment (5 years). If I get another federal job, do all my SF-50's go with me?

Dear Green,

Bureaupat gets a lot of questions regarding the SF-50 (Notification of Personnel Action), and most don't realize how important that form is for their federal career. In a few words, it is the government equivalent of your social security number. You just can't memorize it...unless you are really that smart, in which case most would ask: why are you in government?

For those who don't speak government-ese or just don't realize the importance, the SF-50 is the required form of notification for accessions, conversions, and separations, and for corrections and cancellations of those actions. The form is also used to document and report all personnel actions except mass transfer and mass change actions.

The SF-50 will follow you like paparazzi to a star, provided your personnel office properly files and routes your paperwork during your current assignment and when you transfer to another federal job. Unfortunately, the folder or the forms seem to have a tendency to get lost so I always recommend that you maintain your own duplicate OPF. So make sure they do their jobs. Friday donuts runs are worth their weight in goodwill gold.

Since most agencies remain in the 20th century and have yet to fully embrace a paperless system, we are talking about a physical folder for many federal employees. The more advanced agencies use the Electronic Official Personnel Folder (eOPF), an E-Government initiative developed for all federal agencies by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) to manage and administer the process and to provide employees access to their individual file through a secure Internet connection.

In theory, the eOPF allows each employee to have an electronic personnel folder instead of a paper file. Some of the features and benefits of the system include:

• secure access to OPF forms and information to a geographically dispersed workforce
• a multi-level secure environment
• elimination of loss of an employee's official personnel files in filing and routing
• reduction of costs associated with storage, maintenance, and retrieval of records
• compliance with OPM and federally mandated HR employee record management regulations
• an optional Emergency Contact Information page
• wall to wall carpeting -- Ok, we fibbed a bit on this one.
  

The Only,

- Bureaupat

 
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