U.S. Office of Personnel Management - Ensuring the Federal Government has an effective civilian workforce

Reporting Awards with Ease:
Simplified Nature of Action Codes
The first in a series of articles on changes to Nature of Action Codes for Awards

To improve the quality of awards data and to make data input to the Central Personnel Data File (CPDF) easier and more reliable, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) is changing the CPDF reporting requirements for awards. These changes will be effective October 1, 2000.

• What's new.
• New NOACs.

What's new.

The principal revision to awards processing involves changing most of the award nature of action codes (NOACs). NOACs are the unique numerical codes that identify, for statistical and data processing purposes, particular personnel actions such as appointments, promotions, or awards that agencies report to the CPDF. Rather than collecting data for each type of award that can be given, such as a performance award or an on-the-spot award, awards will be reported in a way that tells us whether the award was given as cash or as time off from duty, and whether it was given to an individual or to a group. These four main criteria create the four key categories that most awards fall into:

New NOACs.  As a result of these new categories, awards with an effective date of October 1, 2000, or later will be reported to CPDF using the following new NOACs:

840   Individual Cash
841   Group Cash
842   Individual Suggestion/Invention (only those recognized with cash)
843   Group Suggestion/Invention (only those recognized with cash)
844   Foreign Language Awards (always given to individuals as cash; only approved for law
          enforcement positions in specific agencies)
845   Travel Savings Incentive (always given to individuals as cash; only allowed for agencies
          that have established travel savings incentive programs)
846   Individual Time-Off
847   Group Time-Off

These new NOACs either group, eliminate, or expand certain types of awards for reporting purposes:

• We eliminated "Special Act" and "Performance" terminology in NOACs.
• Separate data will no longer be collected for performance awards (i.e., rating-based awards).
• Gainsharing awards will no longer be a separate category. Awards granted under group incentive schemes-such as gainsharing and goalsharing-will be reported as group cash awards.
• We will not gather separate information about on-the-spot awards. These awards will be reported as either individual or group cash awards, whichever applies.
• We will be asking agencies to report whether time-off awards were given based on individual or group achievement.

These changes should not affect any of the award programs you already have in place or may be in the process of developing. These changes merely affect the way awards data are reported. We believe these changes will result in streamlining paperwork and increasing the understandability and integrity of the awards data that we report to agencies and, as requested, to the Office of Management and Budget, the Congress, and the public.

In a future issue of this newsletter, we will compare current award categories to the new categories and provide a series of questions human resources offices can use to help determine the correct NOAC for the award being given.

For more information about these changes, you may access our web pages. The memorandum we issued about the new NOACS can be found on our web pages. For additional information, please contact us at perform-mgmt@opm.gov or call 202-606-2720.

Originally published on August 1999.