The Office of Government Ethics has finalized rules, proposed in June, that describe the executive branch ethics program, lay out the responsibilities of various parties, and reinforce ethics messaging.
The regs restate the general principles such as preventing conflicts of interest, as the detailed operations of the ethics program. They spell out agency responsibilities–including furnishing of information to the OGE, and processes related to financial disclosure reports—while describing OGE responsibilities including issuing advisory opinions and other written guidance.
The rules loosen certain policies on training to allow greater flexibility for agency ethics to tailor the content of the training to meet the needs of their employees.
For example, for employees who are required to receive annual training, prior rules require the agency’s training to cover each of the principles of ethical conduct, each of the standards of ethical conduct, and each of the conflict of interest statutes, in addition to any agency supplemental standards of conduct. The new rule instead provides the agency ethics office with discretion to determine how much of the training to devote to each of those areas.
The rules also end a requirement for agencies to write certain detailed plans regarding training that OGE decided were not worth the administrative burden. They meanwhile add requirements to inform newly appointed supervisors of their role in the agency ethics program, and to inform prospective employees, in their written employment offers, of the ethical obligations associated with the position being offered.
