The Modular Disability Folder (MDF) is the official folder for paper cases. Prior to electronic processing, the MDF was created to address the increased complexity of the disability programs. The MDF promotes uniform assembly for all disability claims processing components within the Social Security Administration and the Disability Determination Services.

The MDF is designed in color-coded sections to organize related materials (e.g., all medical records are filed in the Yellow (back) section) and to encourage discarding extraneous or duplicate material.

Disability claims are processed electronically in a Certified Electronic Folder (CEF) unless an exclusion applies. For a list of exclusions and limitations to CEF processing, see DI 81010.030. The CEF is the Agency’s primary method of processing disability claims.

When all of the claims in a case are entered into the Electronic Disability Collect System (EDCS) and there are no exclusions or limitations, the official folder is electronic; i.e., a CEF. For information about creating EDCS cases, see DI 81010.020.

When all claims associated with a case are not established in EDCS (i.e., one or more claims are established in EDCS but one or more are an EDCS exclusion), or some processing limitation occurs in a CEF case that removes the CEF case from electronic processing, the Agency's official folder is paper. For further details about this type of case, see DI 81001.005.

Situations such as these are rare, but the necessity for processing paper cases will continue into the future.

NOTE: The CEF contains the same sections as the MDF (with a few additional sections for queries and multimedia files). For a description of the MDF, see DI 70005.005B.