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.
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:
Individual Cash Awards | Individual Time-Off Awards |
Group Cash Awards | Group Time-Off Awards |
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:
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.