Office of Field Support

Terminology Correction

Terminology Correction CURRENT CAP Rev. 12.4

Responsible office

Office of Field Support

Effective

Retroactive to first colloquial use

Published

June 2, 2026

Purpose

This notice corrects a colloquial term in continued public use.

The term

Members of the public, and a number of published secondary sources, describe the Bureau’s field activity as “time travel.”

The Bureau does not accept the term.

The correction

The Bureau does not travel through time.

Employees may be assigned to nonlocal historical duty at an authorized date-of-duty. Nonlocal historical duty is work performed at a date other than the employee’s date of administrative origin. These are distinct activities under Directive 4.1, and the distinction is not presentational.

The colloquial term is imprecise in four respects:

1. It implies transit, which the Bureau does not schedule, budget, or record. What is recorded is departure processing and arrival processing, separated by a transit interval of no assigned duration.
2. It implies a destination, where the Bureau assigns a date.
3. It implies discretion on the part of the employee, where assignment is directed by the Office of Field Support.
4. It implies the employee leaves federal service for the duration. Employees remain subject to payroll throughout.

On the persistence of the term

The Office of Public Recollection has advised that correcting the term in public guidance increases its use. Directive 7.4 governs the circumstance in which prohibiting a word introduces it, and the Bureau has determined that this notice does not fall within that provision, because the term was already present.

The Deputy Administrator for Prior Conclusions has reviewed the matter and confirmed that the record is clear.

What the public should do

1. Use the approved term in any filing. A filing using the colloquial term is accepted and then rewritten.
2. Do not ask an employee whether they have done it. Employees are not authorized to confirm the activity under a term the Bureau does not use.
3. If you have observed a person present at a date outside that person’s approved lifespan, the person is a chronological nonresident and the applicable filing is Form 52-L, not this notice.

No further results are available for the term you may have entered, and no record of your having entered it is required.

The Bureau does not travel.