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DA Form 5888-1 belongs to the DA series of Department of the Army publications. Its official title is SCREENING OF FAMILY MEMBERS IN REMOTE OCONUS AREAS, and its stated purpose is screening of family members in remote oconus areas. Edition in force: 02/01/2026. Publication status: ACTIVE. Length is 1 page(s), with roughly 91 fields available for entry.
Proponency for the form rests with TSG. The governing authority is AR 608-75, which establishes the circumstances of use and the required routing. Preparation falls to the individual named in the entries or to the unit administrator acting on that individual's behalf; review and signature follow the chain set out in the governing authority. A later edition of this form exists. The edition shown here is superseded and is retained for reference and for records already executed on it.
Distributed formats: PDF, XFDL. The layout is common to all of them; what varies is the method of entry. The pdf is the reference version. In the fillable pdf the entry areas are live objects that accept typing; in the printable version the same areas are inert and are filled by hand after printing.
Any modern browser or reader will display a pdf. Interactive fields behave more predictably in a standalone reader than in an in-browser viewer, which sometimes shows fields it cannot store. An xfdl copy is published as well. It is IBM Lotus Forms, the format carried by several Army systems, and it needs the Lotus Forms Viewer; pdf readers and word processors will not open it.
Every format is available at no charge and without sign-up. Files are distributed exactly as published, with no changes to the page.
What the form asks for
- ContentArea1
- DATE
- L10
- L11
- L12
- L13
- L14
- L15
- L16
- L17
- L18
- L19
- L20
- L21
- L22
- L23
- L24
- L25
- Page1
- PageArea1
- SIGN
- SPOUSE
- T26
- T27
Entry proceeds block by block in the order printed on the page. Identifying particulars occupy the head of the form: name, identification number, unit or organisation, and date of preparation. These fields govern how the record is later retrieved from the file, so they are completed before any substantive block.
Fillable fields accept typing directly. Tab advances from one field to the next in the order the form was built, which is normally the reading order of the page. Check boxes and option buttons are clicked; where a set of options is exclusive, selecting one clears the rest. Fields sized for a single line will not wrap, and text exceeding the width is truncated in print even where it remains visible on screen. Long entries belong in the remarks area or on a continuation, not compressed into a narrow field.
The signature block is the final entry, made by hand or by an authorised electronic method, and without it the document remains a draft. Countersignatures — review, approval, witness — are added in the sequence printed, dated at the moment of signing and not at preparation. Empty mandatory fields lead the list of defects; an inapplicable field is annotated as such, not passed over. Behind it come digit transposition in identification numbers, day-month inversion in dates, and residual entries surviving from a reused copy in place of a blank form.
A Privacy Act statement appears on the form where personal information is collected. It sets out the authority for collection, the purpose, the routine uses, and whether disclosure is mandatory or voluntary. The statement is read before entry, not after. Completed copies carry personal data and are handled and stored under the safeguards applicable to that data.
Once completed, the form goes where the governing authority directs: to the designated office, along the unit administrative channel, or into the personal file. The preparer retains a copy. The length of retention and the manner of filing are set by the records schedule for the series, not by local arrangement.
Related forms are found by series and number. Documents in the DA series sharing a proponent or a prescribing directive commonly travel together, and a form referenced within the body of another is usually filed with it. Continuation sheets, cover sheets, and transmittal documents belong to this group and are collected before submission rather than after.
Revision by the proponent supersedes an edition. Version is read from the edition date printed on the form itself, and a stored copy is compared against the current edition before it is used again. Documents already executed under an earlier edition are not redone because of the change.
What is offered here are copies of published Department of the Army documents, made available for download. The site is independent of the Department of the Army and publishes no forms of its own. The material is informational and not legal advice, and no statement is made about whether any office will accept a given document. Questions of entry, requirement, or eligibility go to the proponent or the servicing administrative office.
Questions and answers
- What is DA Form 5888-1?
- SCREENING OF FAMILY MEMBERS IN REMOTE OCONUS AREAS
- Which edition is current?
- 02/01/2026
- Who is responsible for this form?
- TSG
- In which formats can it be downloaded?
- PDF, XFDL, PDF
Publisher notes
- 14-REQUIRES PRIVACY ACT STATEMENT (AR 340-21)