March 14, 2025
OGE recognizes Sunshine Week (March 16-22, 2025): an occasion to discuss and raise awareness about the importance of open and transparent government. For OGE, Sunshine Week is at the core of our purpose and mission.
So, exactly how does OGE help answer the question, “How can the American people see if their government is working for them?” The answer, OGE helps them see their senior government officials’ financial arrangements and ethics commitments, invites them to review OGE’s leadership and oversight activities, allows them to request documents through the Freedom of Information Act, and makes available lots of information. This is all to help the American people determine whether the executive branch carrying out its work impartiality and serving them.
Through public financial disclosures (OGE Form 278e), OGE and ethics offices in agencies across the executive branch enable the public to see the financial holdings and arrangements of more than 26,000 executive branch officials and analyze them for conflicts of interest with the officials’ job duties. And, for the approximately 1,000 most senior executive branch officials, the public can also see the steps, detailed in a written ethics agreement, those officials take to ensure those holdings and arrangements don’t interfere with their ability to serve the American people. Both are available from OGE’s website for the most senior officials. You can request these disclosures for less senior officials directly from their agency.
Public financial disclosure is just one of many ways that OGE promotes transparency and open government. OGE also provides a view into the workings of the executive branch ethics program and its own activities. For example, OGE publishes oversight reports and agency responses to an annual data call about their ethics program, publishes its correspondence with Congress, and publishes its budget and management documents. Although OGE makes most of its work available on its website, the public may also request documents through its’ Freedom of Information Act pages, which were recently streamlined.
Helping the American people hold their government accountable is not just a nice idea at OGE, it is the very core of our mission. And, during Sunshine Week, and every other week, we are happy to make available information that helps the American people do just that.