Do you know how much your Standard Form 50 (Notification of Personnel Action) statements reveal about your future retirement? The answer might be more than you think.

Before there were electronic official personnel folders, there were cardboard official personnel folders held together by metal fasteners that held copies of an employees SF-50s. and a second copy was given to to the employee for their own records. Its still a good practice to keep copies of your SF-50s.

The reason is you can use these forms to determine the effective date of any relevant personnel actions that define your federal career history. These personnel changes are used in determining your eligibility for retirement and the computation of your retirement benefit.

An employee normally has only one OPF or eOPF. It follows the employee from one agency to another when he or she transfers, or upon request is sent from the Federal Records Centersat the National Archives and Records Administration to the new agency where an individual is reemployed after an extended break in service. Most agencies forward records to the FRC when an employee separates from federal service. A few, however, retain permanent records of separated employees and should be contacted directly for verification of service. Your payroll office also keeps the primary evidence of your federal service by maintaining your individual retirement records.

Some types of service are not reflected on SF-50s. They dont, for example, reflect military active duty service. And there are some types of civilian service that may be documented differently, such as volunteer service in the Peace Corps.

Your SF-50s also dont reflect whether your service is actually creditable towards your retirement eligibility and computation. This should be verified through a human resources specialist at your agency. Sometimes you need to pay a deposit or a redeposit of retirement contributions in order to credit the service. Details regarding creditable civilian service are outlined in Chapter 20 of the Office of Personnel Managements Civil Service Retirement System and Federal Employees Retirement System Handbook.

Personnel actions on your form SF-50s include appointments, separations, placement and return to duty from nonpay status, conversions to permanent appointment from temporary appointments, and other types of pay and position changes. Basic pay changes are documented on these statements as well as your retirement plan and life insurance coverage.

An example of how complicated personnel actions have become can be seen by the retirement coverage code noted in item 30 of your SF-50 (on SF-50s issued before Oct. 1, 1988, its item 8), indicating the type of retirement coverage. Instead of showing simply CSRS or FERS, the form can include a myriad of other letters and numbers indicating such types of coverage as:

One reason its important to know what retirement coverage is on these forms is that errors can creep into the process. This has been especially true since FERS was implemented in 1986. In 1999, the Federal Erroneous Retirement Coverage Corrections Act was enacted to allow employees to correct such errors. This primarily affected people for whom errors caused them to believe they were covered by CSRS rather than FERS. The FERS basic benefit is a little over half that of the CSRS benefit, so FERS employees need to save more for retirement in the Thrift Savings Plan.

If you dont have copies of your SF-50s and youre a current federal employee, you can find the forms in your eOPF. If you recently left your federal job, contact your former agencys personnel office. If its been more than 30 days since you left, you need to contact the FRC. Such requests must be signed and dated, and sent by mail to:

National Archives and Records Administration

Civilian Personnel Records

1411 Boulder Boulevard

Valmeyer, IL 62295

Include your full name, Social Security number, date of birth, and a list of all federal agencies where you were an employeewith addresses and dates of your employment, to the extent you know them.

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Cracking the Retirement Code - GovExec.com