The Office of Government Ethics has cited its own experience as an example of how federal employee training can be done less expensively, pointing to a 2014 training conference that cost 1 percent of the cost of prior traditionally staged conferences.
The agency made its remarks in a recent House hearing to prepare for a reauthorization of the agency, which among other things educates and advises about 4,500 ethics officers working for individual agencies.
OGE said that it was able to sharply cut costs by leveraging existing federal space–rather than for example renting convention center or hotel meeting space–and using technical support from other agencies rather than purchasing it. The result was that it held a multi-day conference for about 500 in-person attendees and 4,000 remote attendees for only about $10,000.
The sessions from that conference and dozens of other regular training courses are available through OGE on an on-demand basis for anyone, with the conference sessions alone viewed more than 5,500 times, it said.
“Even in the area of traditional classroom instruction, OGE has found opportunities to increase efficiency. OGE has implemented a certification program that allows agency ethics officials, at no cost to their agencies, to teach OGE’s courses to other ethics officials and to employees in their agencies. This program reduces redundant course and training material development while promoting accuracy and consistency in the ethics training across government,” it said.
Quality hasn’t suffered, it added, saying that more than 90 percent of users consistently report being better able to do their jobs following OGE-sponsored training.
