Consider what a Department-level form is for. DD Form 2938 — Election of Retirement Coverage for Reemployed Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS) Discontinued Service Retirement (DSR) Annuitants — was established to Election of Retirement Coverage for Reemployed Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS) Discontinued Service Retirement (DSR) Annuitants, and it was placed in the DD sequence because the underlying transaction occurs throughout the Defense establishment in substantially the same shape. Standardizing the record was cheaper and more reliable than letting six services each design their own.
The practical effect of Department-level issue is interoperability. not stated establishes the requirement across the Defense enterprise; not stated keeps the document current for all of it. No service maintains its own variant, which means a completed record travels between components — service to agency, agency to joint command — and arrives in a format the receiving office already knows how to read.
You are looking for edition not stated, listed as not stated. Department-wide supersession is a single event rather than a rollout, which is what distinguishes edition currency on a DD form from the same question on a service publication: nobody anywhere is still accepting the previous version out of habit.
The form is laid out top to bottom in a sequence that reflects how the record will be read, not merely how it was drawn. Identification comes first because everything below it is understood in relation to a named person, unit or transaction; substantive entries follow; certification closes the document because certification attests to what precedes it. Filling out of order tends to produce internal inconsistencies — an entry that made sense before the header was settled and does not afterward.
Verify the printed edition against not stated first. Field structure shifts between editions, and the office that receives your record is reading the current one. That office may sit outside your service, which removes even the informal accommodation you might expect from a colleague who used the old version last month.
Every field takes an entry, N/A included. The reason is evidentiary rather than clerical: a completed record is supposed to show what was asked and what was answered, and blank space records neither. On dates, follow the format printed beside the field. Conventions vary between components, and a joint document is read by people who do not share your habits.
The Privacy Act Statement is not boilerplate appended for legal cover; it is the mechanism by which a statutory obligation is discharged at the moment of collection. When the government asks an individual for personal information, it must state the authority under which it asks, the principal purpose, the routine uses to which the data may be put, and whether answering is voluntary or mandatory. Those four disclosures are placed ahead of the data fields deliberately, because the point of telling you is to inform a choice you have not yet made.
The signature converts entries into an attestation, and that is why its form is prescribed. Ink, or a digital signature carrying a credential that identifies the signer — commonly issued on a Common Access Card. Typed characters in the box satisfy neither standard, because the whole value of a signature lies in being difficult to produce on someone else's behalf. Date it as you sign; an undated attestation cannot be placed in the sequence of events.
Recurring defects have a pattern to them, and it is mostly the pattern of a record that cannot be relied on: an edition that does not match, gaps that cannot be interpreted, entries that cannot be read after scanning, dates that could mean two things, and a certification nobody executed. For an ambiguous field, read the form's own instruction, then not stated, which controls.
Download the form
The set published here is PDF, covering unknown pages with roughly unknown fields.
Nothing here is charged for. Published Defense forms are public documents and distribution carries no fee, in any format. One caution about software: fill the form in a desktop pdf application rather than a browser tab. Browser-embedded viewers implement field behaviour inconsistently, and the failure mode is silent loss of everything you entered.
Route the executed form as not stated or local guidance directs, and retain a duplicate first. Cross-component routing is ordinary for DD forms, which is precisely why a personal copy earns its keep: the receiving office may belong to an organization you have no standing to query about a missing document.
Cross-referenced documents are found by series and number, with nothing further required. That the DD sequence is unified across the Department means a cited number identifies one form and no other, which is the practical payoff of centralizing the numbering in the first place.
Where a service form is cited in the same instruction, the two numbering systems should not be read across. DA numbering belongs to the Army and is administered by an Army proponent; DD numbering belongs to the Department and is administered by not stated or an equivalent Department office. The systems developed separately and were never harmonized, so identical digits in each identify two documents with nothing in common. The prefix, not the number, tells you which system you are in.
A form is downstream of the policy that requires it, and revision usually starts there: a directive is reissued, a collection requirement is altered, notice language is updated by statute. The form is republished as a consequence. Since none of that reaches individual users, an archived copy quietly becomes wrong, and verifying not stated each time you download is the whole remedy.
A word on what this page is. It distributes a published Department of Defense document and describes what the document contains and how it is completed. It is not the issuing authority, does not speak for one, and offers no legal advice; nothing written here determines whether a particular submission will be accepted, because that determination belongs entirely to the office receiving it. Questions of applicability, eligibility or procedure go to not stated, to your servicing personnel office, or to the office identified in not stated.
Questions and answers
- What is DD Form 2938?
- Election of Retirement Coverage for Reemployed Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS) Discontinued Service Retirement (DSR) Annuitants
- Which edition is current?
- Not stated by the publisher
- Who is responsible for this form?
- Not stated
- In which formats can it be downloaded?