CAPPS Notes - February, 2003*

* In lieu of a CAPPS meeting, NFC sent out these notes.

Subject: CAPPS Notes for February (in lieu of our meeting)

Even though the CAPPS Meeting for February was canceled due to weather, we wanted to share information that would have been discussed at the meeting. Our plan is to not reschedule the February meeting and we'll see you in March.

I. HR Briefing (Jody Nyers) -

April 1-3 in New Orleans - agenda to be sent from NFC South. CAPPS Meeting for April will not be held at the HR Briefing but rather here in DC on April 16th.

II. January 2003 Pay Increase (Cliff Lee) -

The President has signed the bill granting Federal employees the 1% additional pay increase retroactive to Pay Period 01; the President's Pay Agent must now make a recommendation regarding the distribution (general increase and/or locality pay) of the additional 1%; then the President will issue another Executive Order announcing the new pay schedules; immediately after, OPM will issue revised pay schedules, as necessary, and provide processing instructions to the agencies. Following the issuance of OPM instructions, NFC will advise agencies on NFC processing of the retroactive pay increase.

III. Louisiana State Tax Changes (Cliff Lee) -

The sweep will be in PP-03 and the changes to the tax formula in PP-04; an e-mail detailing this was sent out to CAPPS on 2/12/03.

IV. Military LWOP & FEHB (Jo Bonner/Jody Nyers) -

A. Some agencies have expressed concern over the processing of NOA 882 (Change in SCD) in PP-01 for individuals on LWOP-US. This happened when agencies did not zero out the SCD counters (as we've advised in previous meetings). There are two absence without pay (AWOP) counters in TINQ and both should have had the LWOP-US time removed. Agencies must cancel the 882 and return the SCD to its prior date.

B. Employees on LWOP-US may use paid leave (e.g., annual, comp, credit or military leave) in lieu of LWOP without having to be returned to duty. According to OPM guidelines, this intermittent use of paid leave has no affect on the agencies payment of 18 months of FEHB premiums (if your agency chose to pay).

C. Agencies will need to manually terminate the FEHB coverage for employees who reach the 18 month limitation (which equals 548 calendar days in LWOP-US status), as stated by OPM. NFC is not currently set up to terminate this automatically; however, we are in the process of making these programming changes. Until such time that you hear from us, it will be the agencies responsibility to monitor and terminate this coverage.

D. WGIs while in LWOP-US status - the system will automatically process a WGI as long as the counters are set to zero. You must check TINQ periodically and zero out those counters prior to the WGI due date in order for it to process automatically.

V. Benefits Updates - (Jody Nyers)

A.  Several BALs were issued (03-201, 03-202, 03-203) referring to changes for employees participating in Blue Cross/Blue Shield. If employees are making retroactive changes and the action does not pass edits, alert Jody ASAP.

B.  LTC Partners contact is Mike Mynsberge and his e-mail is mmynsberge@ltcpartners.com and his number is (603)433-3837. If you have employees whose LTCI action has not applied, contact Mike at LTC Partners as he may need to 'force the action through their system to NFC.' Remember LTCI is a contract between the employee and LTC Partners. Once the data is received at LTC they forward it to NFC for payroll deduction purposes. We have some concern about these actions getting caught up in a rollback case and NFC South is reviewing this to determine whether we will bypass these actions (i.e., LTC actions) whenever a rollback occurs.

C.  NFC is looking into a possible problem with employees who used EEX to make changes to their FEHB during last open season. The transmit file may have only transmitted a change to the PC-HB (tax deferred) code and not the carrier change. A report was either mailed or emailed to you with the SSNs of employees possibly affected by this error. Please review the report (SSNs) and determine if the change the employee was making processed correctly.

VI. EEX Update - (George Morris) -

No meeting held; however, there was a question raised about the timing of an EEX action processed on the same day when PAYE runs. According to NFC South, when EEX sends a file to NFC, they process them on the next PINE pass. If the transaction is entered on Thursday (the night PAYE runs for CV 5 & CV6), the action will be transmitted to NFC on Friday morning and will be entered on the second to last PINE pass on Friday night. Since this is after the employee has been paid, the action will go to Future. The action will be picked up on the first pass of PINE (for the next pay period) which will be on Monday night and will be reflected on NFC's system on Tuesday morning. FYI - we inquired with EPP as well and the same answer applies.

VII. New agencies to NFC - (Cliff)

DHS will be implemented in PP-05 and FBI will be implemented some time this summer.

VIII. User/Work Group Updates - (Jo/Lynda) -

Meeting notices will be sent out from Jo and/or Lynda.

WEB STAR (Jo) - scheduled to go into production March 24th.

EPIC (Lynda) - Either EPIC Version 2.03 or EPIC Version 2.04 may be used until March 16, 2003. On March 10, the server will be set to provide a warning message. This means that if you are using Version 2.03, every time you log into EPIC you will receive a warning message indicating you need Version 2.04. Beginning March 16, only Version 2.04 will be useable. At that time, customers using Version 2.03 will receive a message indicating they do not have the most current version and they will not be able to log into EPIC.

IX. SSNs on the Earnings & Leave Statements (request from Treasury) (George) -

Treasury submitted a request to NFC South who are in the process of reviewing this request.

Hopefully these notes will be helpful; if you have any questions, contact the person whose name appears after the topic. Thanks and see you March 19th for the next regular meeting.