July 2, 2024
Shelley Finlayson, Acting Director and Program Counsel
Maintaining the public’s trust is a shared responsibility between OGE and the 5,300 ethics officials supporting 2.7 million employees across more than 140 executive branch agencies. Together, we work to guard against conflicts of interest and violations of ethical standards.
To ensure that the program is strong, every year OGE requires agencies to self-report on key program elements, including leadership support, financial disclosure, education and training, ethics counseling, remediation of conflicts of interest, and transparency. OGE does this through the Annual Agency Ethics Program Questionnaire (Questionnaire). This year, 100% of agencies (142) submitted their Questionnaire response.
This week, OGE posted the individual agency responses to the Questionnaire, as well as a summary report. This information provides valuable insights into individual agency ethics programs and the ethics program as a whole. For example, agencies reported for calendar year 2023 that:
- Over 99% of the more than 450,000 employees required to file public and confidential financial disclosures did so.
- 92% of the more than 380,000 new employees timely received their required initial ethics training.
- 97% of the more than 420,000 employees required to receive annual ethics training did so.
- Executive branch employees sought ethics guidance on: (1) outside employment/activities, (2) gift acceptance, and (3) financial disclosure reporting.
- Their agencies collectively received nearly 1,500 requests for nearly 25,000 documents requested under the Ethics in Government Act.
We encourage you to review this year’s data from the Questionnaire, which you may also compare to prior data. It is there, in part, for you to see how each agency is complying with important ethics program requirements and to give you confidence that OGE is ensuring that systems are in place at every executive branch agency to safeguard against conflicts of interest.