Technology Saves Time And Money In Ethics Training Program
The Bureau of Public Debt (BPD), a component of the Department of Treasury (Treasury), has designed an interactive ethics CD-ROM as a convenient and cost-effective means of training and providing general ethics information and updates to a dispersed staff. The CD-ROM was designed and prepared in-house by a production team of 5 or 6 persons working a total of 300 hours. From inception to completion of a working beta program the process of developing and preparing the CD-ROM took three months. BPD used resources already in place: a Pentium 133, a 2x CD-ROM Recorder, a CD-ROM disk, a tape backup, and a graphics program, and supplemented these with a Digital Camera, Video Capture Board, Video Modem, Video Camera, and MediaWrangler(TM). The final result is an ethics CD-ROM complete with audio-video messages from Treasury's DAEO, Alternate DAEO, and BPD's ethics officials, in addition to a wide array of general ethics material.
An ethics training computer program has been developed. This program directs employees through a succession of screens, which in total fulfill the annual ethics training requirement. Much of the ethics information was obtained from OGE's Ethics Information Center. The program can be updated by BPD personnel.
In addition to the convenience offered by this resource, BPD believes use of the CD-ROM in ethics training will prove beneficial in many respects: attorneys' time preparing for and providing training sessions will be saved; employees' time spent traveling to required training sessions will be saved; research time will be saved due to BPD's ability to update the CD-ROM for current law and guidance. Peripheral benefits of this project include the transferable experience the production team gained in using this type of technology.
Balancing The Workload: Filing and Training
In response to the new training regulation at subpart G of 5 C.F.R.part 2638, the Department of Energy (DOE) intends to provide verbal ethics training every other year to non-public financial disclosure filers who require annual ethics training. During the alternate years, DOE employees will receive annual ethics training via written means.
DOE will offer confidential financial disclosure filers the option of filing the OGE Optional Form 450-A, if appropriate, during the years that verbal training is provided. This method is intended to balance the workload of ethics officials who both provide training and administer the confidential financial disclosure system, and will ease the process of tracking the type of training provided.
All employees who receive ethics training by written means are required to complete a certification form. Attendance will be tracked at verbal training sessions using sign-in sheets.
Program Overview: Cooperation and Communication Are Fundamental
The Department of the Navy's (Navy) General Counsel is the Designated Agency Ethics Official (DAEO); the Judge Advocate General is Alternate DAEO. This high-level support is crucial to the functioning of the Navy's ethics program. The Assistant General Counsel for Ethics (AGC) is primarily responsible for managing and coordinating Navy's ethics program. Ethics counselors throughout Navy administer the ethics program at their respective organization, activity, or geographic area.
The Navy's ethics program relies heavily upon coordination between the primary ethics office within Navy's Office of General Counsel and ethics counselors and officials in component organizations. Cooperation and communication are fundamental to the consistent and cohesive management which is the essence of the Navy's program.
The public financial disclosure system is managed Navy-wide through the cooperative efforts of component ethics counselors and officials from civilian and military personnel offices. Civilian public reports are filed initially with component ethics counselors and are finally reviewed and certified by the AGC. Public reports filed by military personnel are also initially filed with component ethics counselors, but are finally reviewed and certified at Navy's Office of the Judge Advocate General (OJAG).
The confidential financial disclosure system is vast and decentralized due to the Navy's large number of widely dispersed confidential filers. The confidential system is administered discretely at each component by the component's ethics counselor. Typically, reports are filed with and initially reviewed by filers' immediate supervisors. Intermediate reviews by administrative officers, paralegals, or personnel officials are followed by final review and certification by component ethics counselors.
To meet OGE's annual training requirement, the AGC and officials from the Department of the Army's Standards of Conduct Office have in the past provided joint training at the Pentagon. Annual ethics training is also provided to Navy employees by Navy component ethics counselors. In addition, Navy ethics officials continually provide ethics training beyond that required by OGE and Department of Defense regulations. For example, the AGC and other ethics counselors routinely lead panel discussions and provide ethics training during the Navy Office of General Counsel conferences. Ethics counselors from OJAG also routinely provide post-employment briefings at pre-retirement and transition seminars.
Counseling is provided by component ethics counselors. The AGC provides overall guidance to the ethics counselors and often assists them in providing accurate advice. In addition to advising personnel within their own component organization, OJAG ethics counselors provide a significant amount of ethics advice to over 200 ethics counselors and staff judge advocates throughout the Navy. The AGC also conducts a monthly ethics round table with ethics counselors from throughout the Navy to discuss current issues and to share information.
Looseleaf Handbook Keeps Employees Up-To-Date
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) administers an ethics training program for 2,500 headquarters, regional, and district employees. SEC's program provides many opportunities for SEC employees to obtain up-to-date ethics information.
The initial agency ethics orientation for new headquarters employees is conducted during biweekly sessions by SEC ethics officials. The ethics officials alert new employees to specific ethics issues that have arisen at SEC and provide them with a copy of SEC's Employee Ethics Handbook (Handbook). The Handbook is a looseleaf binder that includes copies of the executive branchwide standards of conduct, explanatory memoranda and materials concerning ethics rules, a list of ethics officials, and sample financial disclosure forms. New employees at regional and district offices are also provided a copy of the Handbook. All employees are required to certify that they have spent one hour of official time reviewing the materials in the Handbook.
SEC has produced a videotape for use in annual training sessions. The annual training, including the videotape, is designed to concentrate primarily on a single topic. Thus, employees consider a new topic in detail each year rather than attending repetitive training sessions year after year.
SEC has also held additional training sessions at headquarters and regional offices (including sessions for division and field ethics officials) covering specific topics such as gifts, post employment, and financial interests.
Periodically, SEC ethics officials distribute memoranda to all SEC employees on ethics-related matters. These documents are intended to supplement or update the Handbook. Ethics officials also publish a column in the SEC employees' newsletter covering issues such as financial disclosure, conflicts of interest, and gifts. All departing SEC employees are provided a memorandum concerning post-employment restrictions.
Written Annual Ethics Briefing and Questionnaire
In 1997, the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACDA) implemented the new training regulation for non-public filers by providing a written ethics briefing to its confidential filers and special Government employees. Accompanying the ethics materials were a questionnaire entitled "What Would You Do?" and a pre-addressed postage-paid envelope for returning the questionnaire.
The questionnaire contains seven scenarios which require consideration of the ethics laws and regulations. Each scenario is followed by four answer choices and spaces to indicate the correct answer choice and cite the applicable law or regulation.
The employees were required to certify to completion of training on the last page of the questionnaire and were given a suspense date for the return of the questionnaire. The returned questionnaires were "graded" by the ACDA ethics staff. The DAEO contacted those employees who responded incorrectly to the scenarios to discuss the ethics matter at hand and the correct answer choice.
This method of training requires employee participation and provides for interaction between ethics officials and ACDA employees. In addition, based upon the responses on the questionnaire, ACDA ethics officials are able to identify problem areas for its employees which may warrant attention in the future. Finally, the written certification facilitates the process of monitoring to ensure that all covered employees received the annual ethics briefing.
Automated Travel Payment Approval Process
The Madigan Army Medical Center (MAMC) at Fort Lewis, WA has recently put into place an automated system for tracking the approval process for acceptance of travel payments from non-Federal sources. Using a data base, ethics officials are able to chronicle pertinent information such as the source of the payment, the payment's amount, the beginning and ending dates of travel, the method of payment, the date the conflict of interest analysis begins and the date it ends, and the status of the request. Charting the progress of requests, as such, appears to streamline this time-sensitive process. In addition, the data base records a thorough summary of travel payments received by MAMC employees throughout the year.
Electronic Mail Improves Ethics Program
With the advent of electronic mail, agencies have become better able to contact employees, on an individual basis and as a whole, to keep them up-to-date on ethics-related matters. Throughout the ethics community we have found extensive use of e-mail, in virtually every element of the ethics program.
Agencies throughout the executive branch use e-mail to remind public and confidential financial disclosure filers to file their reports timely. Ethics officials at the Army Materiel Command (AMC) use e-mail extensively to resolve questions that arise as part of the public and confidential financial disclosure review process. AMC ethics officials have found that they are better able to ask specific questions using e-mail than by leaving messages on telephone answering machines. In addition, e-mail enables filers to respond quickly and with ease. The e-mail correspondence also creates a written record, with no additional work, which can be maintained on file, if necessary.
Ethics officials at the Department of Education used e-mail to announce times and locations of annual ethics training sessions during 1997. The advantage of this type of notification is the guarantee that each covered employee individually receives the information in a timely manner. In addition, as the training season wanes, those covered employees who have not attended annual training may be sent individual reminder notices with very little effort. Other agencies have required employees to certify to completion of the initial ethics orientation or annual ethics training via e-mail messages to the ethics office.
The Federal Communications Commission distributes a monthly ethics newsletter to employees via e-mail. Several agencies keep employees up-to-date on ethics-related matters by sending periodic ethics advisories, and regularly contact field ethics officials to keep them abreast of changes in the ethics laws, regulations, and procedures.
Ethics officials in the Defense Logistics Agency's (DLA) Office of General Counsel use e-mail to coordinate and disseminate ethics advice and opinions provided by component ethics officials to employees in the field. This ensures consistency in the advice provided to employees throughout DLA.
While most of the tasks described here can be and have been successfully completed without the use of e-mail, ethics officials consistently report a tremendous improvement in efficiency, and often in effectiveness, using this technology.
Points Of Contact Are Used To Support The Ethics Program
Ethics counselors at the National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA) have established points of contact (POC) to support the ethics program within each of the three directorates at NIMA. POCs are responsible for ensuring that those employees within their respective directorates who are required to file financial disclosure reports and receive annual ethics training do so in a timely manner. POCs identify covered positions and monitor the staffing of those positions. They track the timely filing of new entrant and annual confidential disclosure reports and the completion of annual ethics training including late disclosure reports and non-completion of annual ethics training.
To recognize the importance and value of the POCs to the NIMA Ethics Program, the NIMA Ethics Staff, including the General Counsel (who is the Designated Agency Ethics Official), have an appreciation function at the end of the filing and training cycles. All POCs, their supervisors, and other officials from the directorates are invited. POCs are presented with certificates of appreciation and a nominal gift from the General Counsel's office appropriately recognizing their contribution to the NIMA Ethics Program. POCs are trained and provided direction throughout the reporting and training cycles by the ethics counselors.
This program contributes greatly to the ethics program at NIMA and POCs appreciate the recognition as well as demonstrate an eagerness for the next filing and training cycles.
Keeping Employees Aware Of Ethics Issues
Ethics counselors at the National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA) use various ways to keep employees aware of ethics issues. For example, NIMA has an internal publication entitled the Edge which is published monthly. The February 1999 issue had more than 20 pages (of a total of 35) dedicated to ethics articles which included an ethics quiz. The Edge is readily available to all NIMA employees.
In addition, there are two publications produced by the Office of General Counsel (OGC) which are also used to provide ethics information to NIMA employees. The Standards of Ethical Conduct Semi-Annual Notice is published in the winter and summer. It covers current news about ethics issues and offers in-depth analysis on selected ethics topics of interest to NIMA employees. Legalines, which is published quarterly, provides NIMA managers and supervisors current news about legal issues affecting NIMA, including ethics matters. Both of these publications are generally available to all NIMA employees.
Finally, the OGC has an internal agency home page through which all of the publications are available. Further, the home page contains post-employment information; the text of 5 C.F.R. part 2635; the Department of Defense supplement to part 2635 at part 3601; the OGE Form 450: A Review Guide; and numerous other ethics documents and reference materials. This home page is also available throughout NIMA.
Preventing Conflicts of Interest
At the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission, conflicts of interest may arise from case proceedings before the Commissioners and the Administrative Law Judges (Judges). Therefore, disqualifications typically would be required when an action on a pending case (including a motion) is sought. Annually, financial disclosure filers, most of whom are Commissioners and Judges, are provided with lists of subsidiaries, divisions, and affiliates for each stock and bond holding found on their financial disclosure reports. Filers use these lists to determine the need to disqualify themselves from a particular case.
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