OPM proposes changes to management of personnel files

Agencies may have pay for the creation and maintenance of current employees' Official Personnel Folder (OPF).

Under a proposed rule in today's Federal Register, the Office of Personnel Management wants to change the regulations to clarify the roles and responsibilities of current and former employee OPFs.

OPM is proposing to change the definition of who owns and who controls the folders. OPM wants to transfer the folders to be solely under the employees' agency control until the worker leaves the government. Then OPM would be responsible for maintenance.

OPM also wants to change the cost structure for requests to the National Archives and Records Administration of OPFs for former employees. Currently, OPM bears all of these costs.

"The language of the current version of [the law] has caused confusion with respect to the allocation of costs for the storage and physical transfer of OPFs," the notice states.

"NARA, which stores OPFs when the subjects are not employed by the federal government, has informed OPM that it adopted the position that it lacks authority to bill any agency other than OPM for costs associated with OPFs because it believed that the language of [the law] precluded any other solution."

OPM states that the current approach causes an increased burden on them as agencies request the same file several times, and do not have any "incentive to make requests judiciously" because the agency isn't paying for the service.

The proposed rule states that

• Agencies are responsible for all costs associated with the establishment and maintenance of OPFs, and transfer of OPFs to the National Personnel Records Center.
• Agencies are responsible for all costs associated with agency-initiated requests for OPFs or services from the National Personnel Records Center.

Comments on the proposed rule are due March 22.

Recent budget guidance from the Office of Management and Budget is requiring Justice, Interior, GSA, DoD, OMB, Social Security Administration, Treasury, the National Science Foundation, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Small Business Administration to digitize the paper back-files for employees through the Enterprise Human Resource Integration program by Sept. 30.

DoD must complete its implementation of the Electronic Official Personnel Folders (eOPF) by Dec. 31, 2013.

(Copyright 2010 by FederalNewsRadio.com. All Rights Reserved.)