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The Air Force’s Personnel Center is recommending new and current employees of the federal government review their electronic official personnel folder periodically.
“Your eOPF contains records agencies use to make important employment decisions throughout your federal career,” said Aqueilla Grimmage-Smith, chief, Transition Operations Branch. “These documents show your federal employment history, verify your military service credit, and records your benefits in regards to health, life insurance, beneficiaries, and Thrift Savings Plan.”
Ensuring the eOPF is correct and up to date is the employee’s responsibility. While there are no set timelines, employees records are typically updated for annual pay adjustments in January and appraisal pay-outs, e.g. cash award and time-off awards.
“When you get an e-mail notification stating that a new document has been added to your eOPF, take a moment and look,” said Grimmage-Smith. “While every effort is made to ensure the information in your eOPF is correct, errors can occur and may occasionally go unnoticed. However, periodically reviewing your own record significantly reduces those chances.”
What to check in your eOPF
- Check the Standard Form 50 (SF-50) Notification of Personnel Action. This is a legally binding document for the government used to document employment history. It includes the employee’s grade, occupation, salary, tenure, retirement plan, Veterans’ Preference, and remarks specific to the appointment, to name a few.
- Check for spelling errors, Social Security number, and date of birth accuracy.
- Ensure Veterans’ Preference is accurate, if applicable.
- Verify the correct life insurance election code is documented.
- Check and double check the retirement plan.
“I can’t express the importance of verifying your retirement plan enough,” said Grimmage-Smith. “If your retirement plan is not coded correctly, you could end up paying too much or not enough into retirement. The end result could be big debts which must be repaid at the employee’s own expense.”
If an employee finds incorrect data or missing documents in their eOPF, immediately report the discrepancies to the local civilian personnel office for review and resolution.
To register for eOPF access, go to the eOPF page in myPers at https://mypers.af.mil/app/answers/detail/a_id/23070.
