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U.S. Office of Personnel Management www.opm.gov - Recruiting, Retaining and Honoring a World-Class Workforce to Serve the American People

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Welcome to OPM.Gov!

As part of our Strategic and Operational Plan 2006-2010 we have redesigned our website.  The format of the site has been overhauled to improve navigation and provide a more target user experience.  Our users are important to us, and we want to make it as easy as possible to find what you need.

Layout

The site design universal features include a header and footer which you’ll find on all web pages to which the redesign has been applied.

The Header provides one-click access to our homepage by simply selecting the OPM.gov Home link.  You’re also one-click away from the Subject Index page, Contact Us page, and Important Links listing.

Screenshot of OPM website header

The Subject Index is an alphabetical listing of content available on our site as well as links to other sites which offer content frequently searched for on OPM.Gov.

Our Important Links page provides access to information in compliance with Office of Management and Budget policies and procedures for Federal agency websites.

Contact Us links you to phone numbers and email addresses by Subject or Organization.

Search box and Advanced Search are available on all pages for user convenience. 

The Footer displays the physical address for our headquarters offices in Washington, DC along with our general public contact phone and TTY numbers.  You’ll also find we’ve included a PDF icon in the footer so you can easily get help when you encounter this document file type on our site.

Screenshot of OPM website footer

We actively display a listing of content newly added to our site on the homepage.  The WHAT’S NEW AT OPM section is updated in real time to display a brief description of new content along with a ‘more’ link which allows for quick linking to further details.  Users can also select the New WHAT’S NEW AT OPM title to visit the full sitelisting of current and archived items.  While there you can sign up to get a weekly digest of postings via email.

Screenshot of OPM website Browse by Audience section

Use the Browse By Audience section to identify the category which best suits your need for this visit. 

The Job Seekers path provides links and information which will assist in the search for initial or new employment. 

The Federal Employees path provides access to information commonly referenced by current federal employees seeking information on topics as diverse as health benefits programs, training, pay tables, and how to report a death.

Retired employees and persons acting on their behalf will find the Retirees & Families path a information packed resource for locating publications, forms, tools, links to useful external resources, as well as answers to questions about Family Benefits, Death Benefits, Cost of Living Adjustments, and much more.

Anyone who works in the field of Human Resources (HR) management will find the HR Practitioners/Agencies path a wealth of helpful information. The content found here is applicable to the strategic management of human capital.  It is also the gateway to practical tools and resources such as laws, regulations, guidance, operating manuals, forms, and much more. 

 

Screenshot of OPM website right links

The bight red Operating Status box which heads our featured links section provides one-click access to the daily status of Federal agency operations in the Washington, DC area during inclimate weather or emergency situations.

Our list of Most Requested links guide users to content which is the most popular based on our web statistics.

News & Events links provide one-click access to areas where there is activity of current interest.

About OPM is the section which features information about agency operations, organization, leadership and other items of interest to users.  Selecting More About the Agency will guide you to current as well as historical documents which are relevant to our organization.

External Links

While viewing content on this site you will sometimes encounter links to non-OPM pages and organizations. Please note that the presence of external hyperlinks does not constitute endorsement by the Office of Personnel Management, its employees, or contractors, of such external websites or the information contained therein.

Publications and Other Content

Information from this site may be downloaded for personal, non-commercial use. There is no penalty, or threat of penalty, for the reproduction or use of documents from this site. However, neither the Office of Personnel Management nor any of its employees or contractors make any warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to documents available from this server.

Broken Links & Such

Our site has over 80,000 pages of content and as with any site redesign you'll occasionally link to pages which have not been completely enhanced with the new design template. Please bear with us. We are working everyday to fix pages, broken links etc.

Browser Specifications

This site is best viewed in Internet Explorer 5+, Netscape 7+, Mozilla and/or Firefox. We have done our best to make sure the site looks the same in every browser but older browsers like Netscape 4+ may render differently. Even though the site may look different in Netscape 4+ and older browsers, it will contain the same information.

Viewing Our Pages

The OPM website allows you to change the text size through standard browser settings. You may do so by selecting the "View" menu item on top of your browser:

  • Internet Explorer: View > Text Size > Larger
  • Firefox/Netscape: View > Text Size > Increase

This may not work on some older web pages with "hard-coded" or "absolute" text sizes. To override these settings in Internet Explorer go to:

  1. Menu items: Tools > Internet Options
  2. Select Accessibility button on the bottom
  3. Check the following:
    [/] Ignore colors specified on Web pages
    [/] Ignore font styles specified on Web pages
    [/] Ignore font sizes specified on Web pages

Firefox should still allow text resizing even if the web page is not coded for such flexibility.

Printing Our Pages

If you print web pages from our site you will notice that the printed page looks different than it did when you were viewing it in your browser. This is because we've optimized our site print function to:

  • ensure that no page content is clipped by the printer margins
  • provide the entire URL of the page in the event that the URL is longer than can be handled by your printer settings
  • maintain only the content of the page without images, backgrounds, and styles used for layout purposes.

NOTE: Netscape 4+ users will not see these changes and could potentially experience content clipping when printing.

Feedback

Don’t hesitate to tell us how we are doing.  We rely on your feedback to help develop this site, so if you have any comments or suggestions for us, please let us know. We want to hear what we've done right and what else we need to do to better serve you. 

  • Email Webmaster@opm.gov if you are experiencing technical difficulties with our site.

This page can be found on the web at the following url: http://www.opm.gov/help.asp