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

Purpose

CPDF is an information system to support statistical analyses of Federal personnel management programs.  It is not intended to be a Governmentwide personnel accounting system.

Composition

CPDF is composed of two primary data files.

1. Status File
   Documents the characteristics of employees at a specific point in time.
   
   
2. Dynamics File
   Documents personnel actions (e.g., accessions, separations, promotions, etc.) over a period of time.

Coverage

CPDF coverage is limited to Federal civilian employees.

Executive Branch coverage includes all agencies except the following:

• Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve
• Central Intelligence Agency
• Defense Intelligence Agency
• Foreign Service personnel at the State Department (included until March 2006)
• National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency
• National Security Agency
• Office of the Director of National Intelligence
• Office of the Vice President
• Postal Rate Commission
• Tennessee Valley Authority
• U.S. Postal Service
• White House Office

Other exclusions include:

• Public Health Service’s Commissioned Officer Corps
• Non-appropriated fund employees and foreign nationals overseas.

Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) did not provide dynamics data until Fiscal Year 2007.

Legislative Branch coverage is limited to the Government Printing Office, U.S. Tax Court, and selected commissions.

The Judicial Branch is entirely excluded.

CPDF coverage has changed over time.  Coverage in older files may differ slightly from coverage in more current files.

CPDF coverage can differ from that of other Office of Personnel Management (OPM) data sources.

Collection, Editing, & Production of Status and Dynamics Data

With the exception of "generated" data elements, all status and dynamics data are submitted by the agencies from their own separate personnel systems.  Generated data elements are created from one or more submitted data elements (e.g., Metropolitan Statistical Area is generated from Duty Location, a submitted data element).

Agency submissions are subjected to validity and relationship edits to ensure codes are valid and consistent with other related data elements (e.g., if pay plan is GS then grade must be 01-15).  These edits can detect invalid data but not miscoded data (e.g., record shows grade of 11 but employee is actually grade 12).

• Submissions that fail minimum acceptability requirements are rejected and must be resubmitted.
• Values of individual data elements that fail the edits are replaced with asterisks to prevent invalid data from entering CPDF.
• Agencies are kept informed of their edit failures and may submit corrections.
• The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) may change data element values that are missing or invalid by matching to older files or making the values consistent with statistical assumptions.  Alteration of agency submitted values is limited to situations where agency correction is not possible or feasible and failure to act would seriously undermine the usability of the data.

Submissions and their corrections are processed to produce quarterly (i.e., March, June, September and December) status and dynamics files.

• Status files
  Reflects employment at the end of a quarter but, for many agencies, may actually reflect employment at the end of the pay period just prior to the end of the quarter.
  
  
• Dynamics files
  Reflects all personnel actions occurring within a quarter but may be missing actions which appear in subsequent quarters because of late submission by the agencies.

Once a quarterly CPDF status or dynamics file is released for use it is no longer subject to correction.

Accuracy

CPDF accuracy is affected by:

• Omissions (e.g., personnel action missing from dynamics file).
• Duplications (e.g., employee with multiple records in status file).
  • CPDF has some safeguards against true duplication.  What appears as duplication may be valid as in the case of employees with multiple appointments.
• Invalid data, which get recoded to asterisks by the CPDF edits.
• Miscoded data (e.g., record shows grade of 11 but employee is actually grade 12).

Accuracy varies from quarterly file to quarterly file, agency to agency, and data element to data element.

The Office of Personnel Management performs periodic surveys to examine CPDF accuracy by data element. 

[This script opens a new browser window to CPDF/OPF Accuracy Survey, Fiscal Year 1994; Alternate link to CPDF/OPF Accuracy Survey, Fiscal Year 1994] CPDF/OPF Accuracy Survey, Fiscal Year 1994.

Data Element Information

Changes in organizations and personnel classifications over time require corresponding changes in the CPDF codes.  These changes, which involve additions, deletions and/or redefinitions, can make tracking a consistent set of information over time difficult.

Some CPDF data are collected at the time of appointment and not routinely updated (e.g., education level may reflect a bachelor’s degree at the time of the employee’s appointment but not the master’s degree the employee subsequently earned.)

Pay

• All pay fields, except those for fee basis and piece work, reflect annualized rates of pay.  They do not reflect earnings which may include other forms of pay (e.g., overtime, shift differentials) or may be less than the annualized rate because of the employee’s work schedule (i.e., less than full time non-seasonal) or individual circumstances (e.g., leave without pay).
• Adjusted basic pay may be "capped" to reflect payable rather than scheduled rate of pay.
• Basic pay and total pay are not "capped" and may exceed amount actually paid.

While most CPDF data elements have specific formatting requirements, some do not.  This is particularly true for data elements in the auxiliary files which frequently reflect uncoded or agency defined values (e.g., although most names conform to a last name, first name format, there is no mandatory format).