Federal Manager's Daily Report

The Office of Government Ethics has posted its annual report on government ethics operations, based on a questionnaire. Subjects include organizational structure, ethics program administration, advice and counseling, education and training, financial disclosure, and enforcement.

The report includes statistics about ethics activities with a “goal of promoting transparency regarding the executive branch ethics program. The agencies’ responses are useful for surveying the structure and capacity of the executive branch ethics program, and they help shape OGE’s priorities,” OGE said. OGE also uses the information during its reviews of agency ethics programs.

It found, for example, that about 6,700 individuals government-wide support ethics programs and that two-thirds of them spent two or more hours a week on ethics matters. A fifth of ethics programs use contractor support, mostly clerical assistance or support for the financial disclosure program.

The most commonly cited challenges identified by ethics officials included preparing for the Presidential transition and managing programs with limited resources. About one-third of agencies reported needing additional resources; human capital was the most requested resource followed by technology and then budgetary resources.