The eOPF is an Office of Personnel Management (OPM) e-Gov initiative for the electronic storage and retrieval of data and documents associated with a Federal employee's Official Personnel Folder (OPF). Each Federal Government employee has an OPF. The OPF is the repository of human resource (HR) documents related to the employee (e.g., personnel actions, promotions, reassignments, etc.). In some agencies, the OPF can also be used to store job-related or agency management data, such as parking permits, firearm permits, etc. Currently, in most agencies, this data is stored as hard-copy printouts in folders located in various HR servicing offices. When an employee, supervisor, or HR staff needs to refer to information contained within the OPF, they must arrange with the HR servicing office to view the documents. In some cases, this means retrieval of the file from a geographically remote location which can be awkward and time consuming.
The OPM eOPF system is a replacement alternative for the hard-copy printout-based OPF. The eOPF stores the information in electronic database records and images for ready retrieval and on-line viewing. The database records are entered into the eOPF from the personnel systems that generate them. For instance, the annual cost of living pay adjustments (COLAs) are processed within the employee's personnel and payroll system. One of the outputs of this process is the Request for Personnel Action (SF-52). For hard-copy OPFs, a printed copy of the SF-52 for each employee is sent to the servicing HR office where it is subsequently filed into the employee's OPF. The OPM's system would receive the data electronically and incorporate it as a database record of the action, thereby eliminating a great deal of manual activity and the accompanying delays and potential misfilings, etc.
Of course, this part of the system only deals with new actions (i.e., those that take place after an agency implements the eOPF). Historical data residing in the current OPF and data which is not generated and transferred from the HR systems (e.g., parking permits) are also incorporated into the eOPF system by scanning the current hard-copy documents and storing them as images that can be retrieved and viewed as required. Depending on agency implementation, the eOPF can provide the employee, the HR servicing office, and the supervisor access to the OPFs via the Internet in an on-line, real-time basis.
The National Business Center (NBC) Information Technology Directorate (ITD) has signed an agreement with the OPM to be the hosting and operations support facility for the eOPF system. As a part of that support, the NBC has established an agreement with the National Finance Center (NFC) for the NFC to provide the eOPF help desk support. The first eOPF client is the Department of Homeland Security's Custom and Border Patrol (CBP). The orientation and training region for the CBP became operational in October 2005, followed by the production regions in November 2005. This accomplishment is a significant event for the system, since it is the initial implementation of a highly visible and widely applicable e-Gov initiative that is anticipated to result in significant savings to Federal agencies.
The initial support environment consists of 25 servers, 3 terra bytes (TB) of data storage, and an array of hardware and software management, monitoring, and reporting tools. While it is still early in the process, the OPM has been very active in signing new customers and is very anxious for the NBC to add to its capabilities to support them. The OPM would like to bring eleven additional clients into production over the next several months. These clients include: the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Education, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the Library of Congress, portions of the Department of Energy, the Federal Aviation Administration, and the Department of Agriculture, among others. Overall, the OPM has projections of employee counts of over one million Federal employees with the potential for significantly more. The eOPF is also related to a separate OPM e-Gov initiative, the Electronic Human Resources Initiative (EHRI), which will provide on-line access to an even wider range of personnel and payroll information. The ITD has begun preliminary discussions with the OPM about providing a similar service for that initiative as well.
The NBC's ITD is excited to be an integral part of this e-Gov initiative. It has been very active in establishing the support environments as well as developing the long term relationships with the NFC and the OPM to make this a successful and productive relationship for all. There have been a great deal of positive cooperative accomplishments to date, and many more will be required in the future as the application moves from a single client to virtually Government-wide. The foundations being established during this period will be critical to the longer term OPM and NBC goals and are an area of emphasis for the ITD.
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