Unlocking eSignature Legitimacy for Business Ethics and Conduct Disclosure Statement in United States

How to eSign a document: e-signature legitimacy for Business Ethics and Conduct Disclosure Statement in United States

good afternoon and welcome to the introduction to confidential financial disclosure my name's Patrick Sheppard and I'm very pleased to be joined today by Cheryl cane piasecki welcome Cheryl thanks Patrick so today we're gonna be talking about part one of our sort of 450 introduction to the system and the forms and the review process and all that so this is really appropriate if you're new to confidential financial disclosure if you're new to some of the resources or if you just want a refresher for the coming filing season absolutely the the three-part series that we're offering at this week and next is to provide you basically with a foundational and comprehensive introduction to confidential financial disclosure the system the administrative aspects of the program along with the form itself and and the the review function I think that we've had some changes to the confidential financial Scalia regulations the revisions went into effect in January first I believe of 2019 so consequently many of the materials that we had available in the Institute for ethics and government have been superseded by those changes and so we are in effect rebuilding the content that we had on the site so we wanted to get we wanted to start rebuilding our confidential financial schools report portfolio by providing you with some fundaments as it were to to the system that that you all are going to have to be administering come February and that makes a lot of sense with the changes to the regulation the changes to the system some of the materials we had on the Institute for ethics and government were a little old outdated so this is a good opportunity to refresh our materials but also to introduce you to some of the new materials that are available to help you and one of the primary objectives that we have is to also familiarize you with the confidential financial disclosure guide the OGE form 450 guide this is going to be kind of the queen of our parade for the next three segments so we're going to be following along pretty much along the table of contents that you'll see in the guide so if you look sections one sections to and sections three of the guide that will give you a pretty good and clear idea of the content that we're going to be covering over the next three sessions and I would encourage you right now if you don't have it open and available to please do so because at one point during this during this session we are going to be actually going into the guide and shepherding you through sections of the guide I think that's uh that's an important point because you know with these these online sessions one of the things we want to do is prepare you to actually do the work and when you're doing the work of reviewing confidential financial disclosure reports this is really the tool you ought to be using you should keep it on your desk those of us who are familiar with the 278th system are familiar with those big binders we all used to keep on our desks but really going to the resource is important it's it's better to do that even if you think you remember then to remember from that broadcast I watched a few months ago I'm one thing I would do want to highlight for you all - is the revisions that were made to this guide we're done with a view to trying to create a compendium and kind of a one-stop shop of resources for you to to make reference to when you're doing your financial disclosure review but also just when you also have questions about the system generally so this guide this revised guide includes a lot of the information that had previously been available from a variety of sources including a frequently asked questions document and some other resources that we had had on our website that again we're outdated so we've just tried to incorporate much if not all of that information into this one document so that again you have it's mostly one-stop shopping so no matter what your role is in the in the financial disclosure system we're hoping that you will take part in these reads a separate series because the problem with the confidential financial disclosure system as it is with the public financial disclosure system is that it consists of many different parts there are many different aspects to the system all of which have to work together towards the common purpose of the system and so if you only have one little piece of the puzzle let's say that your only your only job is to do an initial review of a 450 it's supremely important that you understand where your piece of the puzzle fits into the larger puzzle because that way it will enable you to have to make sure your processes are efficient to make sure that your analyses are are serving the purpose the overarching purpose of the confidential financial solution system I think that's an important point about the confidential system in particular is that it is very proposed 'iv in in its composition almost all of the decisions we make throughout the entire the entire system are designed with one purpose in mind and what is that purpose so why do we why I think we need to start with the purpose the the objective why do we dedicate time energy resources to this system Patrick why is it what is the importance why do we do financial disclosure well the reason we do financial disclosure is to to prevent conflicts of interest mm-hmm that's that's the only reason they're the reason we conduct the confidential system from how we designate filers to the information on the form to the instructions to the review process is all designed around this one purpose and that's to prevent conflicts of interest and what do we mean by conflicts of interest I think when we're talking about conflicts of interest we're talking about the Nexus or the improper influence of private interests upon government decision-making so we're really looking for an overlap between the government responsibilities of our filers and their private personal financial interests business arrangements things like that so that those outside interests do not improperly influence or sort of pollute their ability to do work on behalf of the government so I think that that's an important point to keep in mind that when we're talking about conflicts of interest first of all while we while we are making reference to a criminal statute we are also talking about it in a more in a broader and more vernacular kind of way which is to say that the the goal the aim of confidential financial disclosure is to identify work that's being performed by individuals in the organization and then do our best to protect the integrity of that work from any potential for use of public office for private gain or somehow misusing your position individuals misusing their position in order to benefit themselves or others in a private way so when we're talking about conflicts of interest I want everyone to be aware that we're talking about a broader concept simply than title 18 of the United States Code section 208 absolutely when we think about things like the standards of conduct we're really talking about different sorts of conflicts of interest oh yeah when we're talking about the gifts regulations for example we're talking about gratuities improperly influencing government work it's not a criminal conflict of interest for purpose of 208 but it's all the same a kind of conflict of interest exactly so when we're talking about what it is that that that that the review of the 450 is is attempting to to do is we're trying to mitigate this notion of conflicts and the reason we want to do that is because we're trying to make sure that we're not in any form of bias particularly a pecuniary kind of bias to be introduced into the decision-making processes that government employees undertake when they're performing their duties because it does have a concrete harm to the work that we perform and what are some what are some what are some harms Patrick that the this is really trying to sort of like well forestall and I think when we when we think about the kinds of work the government does lots of work that has an effect on outside entities has the potential to be harmed by conflicts of interest you know if we're talking about purchasing things through a contract if we have some sort of bias introduced during the contracting process we can have bid protests or we can have investigations or challenges to those source selections if we're talking about investigations bias by investigators can lead to the conclusions of investigations being challenged in court or being just called into question simply likewise if we're talking about more broad matters like regulatory matters if we have those decisions are being polluted by private financial interests or other kinds of bias we could just get bad policy policy that doesn't achieve the objectives that designed to achieve so really we're talking about the fundamental integrity of the work that we do as government officials so what are we what do we need to know to prevent conflicts of interest we're talking about needing to know on the one hand what the work is that our employees are performing so what we're trying to do in the confidential financial sclera system is we're trying to identify the areas of greatest risk for the organization where is the work being performed and by whom is the work being performed whereas there's the greatest risk for these conflicts of interest for these biases to be introduced for things that could somehow affect the integrity of the work typically we're looking at work that has the ability to affect the interests of an outside organization so we're really concerned about people who have duties that affect the interests of non-federal entities so that's one piece of information we're always going to have to have and I think we have to keep that in mind that that's what we're protecting so we need to know as much as we can possibly know about that when we undertake a review of an ogee form 450 or or another funny confidential financial closure form no absolutely and I think that's important to keep in mind as you start reviewing forms is that the information contained on the form is only half of the story what you as a reviewer need to bring to the table is knowledge and understanding about the work that goes on in your agency and if for some reason you don't have that information available you need to somehow get it absolutely because then what the employee is bringing to the table in the guise of the ogee form 450 or another alternative format which we're going to talk about in a minute they're bringing they're bringing the facts the other piece the other piece of information the other facts that you need in order to be able to determine if there is any potential for a conflict of interest or other ethics concern and that's financial holdings outside positions spousal finance financial holdings business relationships that the employee may have so what they're bringing to you on the 450 is this is the the second critical piece of information that you're going to need it in order to be able to do a complex analysis but at the end of the day I think what you need to be thinking about when you when you're looking at an OG form for 50 or another similar form this is a request for advice and counsel the employee is coming to you with certain information and you're being tasked with applying the law to the information that you've been given to determine whether or not there's any possibility that this employee might encounter might bump up against either the criminal conflict of interest statute 208 or others or other bodies or other laws and regulations that are that are with ethical implications so one way that we could think about the 450 is that it's compulsory advice and counsel right what we're doing is we're identifying people who must who must receive advice and counsel before they proceed to work on matters so when you're doing your review of your form as I think it's always important for us to remember what the certification statement is that we're attesting to whether you're the certifying official or whether you are helping to to engage in a review that's going to allow the certifying official to to make the certification the certification we make is that I conclude that the filer is in compliance with applicable laws and regulations so I think it's always important for us to keep that in mind that that's the end goal is to be able to certify that you have reviewed the information on the form and anything that you've reviewed on the form appears that appears that the employee is in compliance with applicable law and regulation and I've highlighted that there in red so the applicable laws and regulations as a general proposition and and we're going to be discussing this in more detail when we start talking about the actual review itself but I think it's important for you to know this is the law that you're going to kind of have to have under your belt when you're doing a review of an ogee form 450 you the criminal statutes 18 USC sections 201 through 209 obviously the standards of conduct at 5 CFR part 26 35 the financial disclosure regulations themselves which are at 5 CFR 26 34 for purposes of confidential it's under subpart I and then agents any agency supplemental regulations that you may have with respect to prior approval for outside activity or prohibited financial holdings anything that's within the Bailiwick of of your own supplemental regulations that's obviously something you would also be certifying that they are in compliance with okay so is a general just as a general matter just so that we're all familiar with the authorities under which we operate this system operates the ethics and Government Act actually discusses the the requirement for federal officials to make public disclosures have selected personal financial interests but it also provided OGE with the authority to establish a confidential financial disclosure system for executive branch employees who may not be subject to public financial disclosures so OGIS authority to do this comes from the ethics and Government Act as well as a separate executive order one two six seven four so I think it's just important for us all to be aware of where do we derive the authority to be able to ask people for this information because we all know that that we sometimes get pushback from individuals about you know under what authority are you asked me for this information and this is the authority under which OTE has created this system yeah and I think this is also an important distinction because when we look at the public system we have almost no discretion about what gets disclosed the statute lays out very clearly exactly the information that's required on the public financial disclosure report in contrast the ethics and Government Act says OGE create a confidential system that works so that's what we've done so when you look at 2634 that's OGIS effort to collect the information that we think you need in order to make a determination about the potential for conflict of interest under the criminal statutes the standards of conduct or any other authorities that you have to look at and I think RG has in in many respects modeled the confidential system on the public system you know with for good reason I mean it's it is a model and and it requests the kind of information that we think would be material to to a potential conflict of interests or conflict of interest analysis but we're going to talk a little bit later on about how if if that's not serving your purposes if if how if the the form that we've created and the requirements that we have within the context of that form are not serving your purposes and remember the purpose is for you to be able to protect the integrity of the programs and operations that you are serving in your agency that you have some authority to create alternative systems that work better for you and we're going to talk about that a little bit more later but again it's just it's a matter of understanding this the entire purpose of the system is to prevent conflicts of interest and you are best situated to determine how best you can go about making those types of prophylactic determinations so let's get into one of the one of the key pieces of the system which and this is a really critical part of the ogee form 450 system this is what kind of makes or breaks this system with respect to its effectiveness is who do we have file who do we designate as a confidential financial disclosure filer why does that matter Patrick I think this is really the one of the linchpins of the entire executive branch ethics program this is our primary risk determination because if we have the wrong people filing 450s a lot of our program elements don't work properly and what we're talking about here is making a risk-based determination based on the duties and responsibilities of our employees so if we're talking about confidential filers these are people who are below the SES so gs-15 they're Kaufland or below who have responsibilities and duties affecting non-federal entities so basically these are the people in shorthand who we're concerned about having the potential for conflicts of interest they're people whose work can be affected by private interests that may run contrary to the government's interest and I think one of the really important things here is it's determined by you yes this is where agencies decide where to put their resources where to put the the resources to review the 450s but also who gets mandated to receive annual training among other things so this is really your fundamental risk determination about who and your organ really does work that affects outside entities that could be compromised in some way by a by potential conflicts of interest and the regulation itself at 26 thirty-four point 904 has a non exhaustive list of examples of the kinds of positions and the kinds of duties that might be best suited to or that we should trigger perhaps at least an evaluation about whether or not they should be required to file a no GE form 450 but those responsibilities and duties again are not exhaustive and the agency each agency is given the discretion to make the determination irrespective of what 904 may delineate in the way of some responsibilities and duties which positions actually and again it's a risk calculus you're you're making a risk calculation which which positions present the greatest risk or likelihood for a potential conflict of interest and then when you flag those positions then you're basically saying to that employee again we're at work you were gonna require you this is going to be compulsory advice and counsel we're gonna make you file a 450 so that we can actually make a concrete determination about whether and to what extent that risk is real right and we didn't leave this determination to the agency if I accident we did this because you're better situated than we are to understand who in your organization faces these risks so that's it's a really important thing it's a step in the process that your organization should take seriously because if you get this wrong it's very difficult to have an effective system that's true and so some of the best people who are positioned to help you with this are of course your supervisors supervisors are the ones who are most familiar with what it is that employees are actually doing and what they're going to be assigned to do and so Odie has created a job aid primarily I think to allow ethics officials to farm this out to people who might not be intimately familiar with 26:34 point 904 or have any desire to read 26:34 Point 904 and we've broken it down we've taken this as a job aid where we've basically taken the criteria and we've broken it down into a series of steps and yes/no questions that you could have supervisors or other folks anyone that you think would be appropriate to help you make these determinations with respect to a class of positions with respect to a specific employee I mean it walks them through these criteria to help them help you determine whether in to what extent you know categories of employees or individual employees should be required to be confidential financial sclerotia filers and this job I'm sorry project did you want to add something yeah I would just sort of caution folks I think this job aid is extremely useful but an experience that I had using this job aid in an agency that was setting up a confidential financial disclosure system was it really important for the ethics office to offer support to supervisors I guess the experience I had was here's this great job aid there are a handful of yes/no questions if you could help me understand who on your staff but faces these risks that would be great then we can start our confidential financial disclosure system and the list I got back was we're just gonna have everyone file so it's which defeats the purpose right I said well every way everyone can't be equally at risk that seems that seems impossible and they said well you know where I'm I don't want to take the risk of having someone not file who should have been filing hey so I don't want to be responsible for that problem so the the what I found was the supervisors in this agency we're very willing to mitigate risk by spending my time and as the eventual review of these reports so what we found that really worked was to ask them to put their their employees into three categories definitely should file definitely needn't file doesn't need to file and maybe there's some risk and I said you know once you've done that let's sit down and talk about this and figure out if there's really a need for all those people in the middle category to file and what we found was some yes they indeed you to file to me we would be the designated them as filers and they then they filed and some of the people the risk was so episodic or attenuated other they really didn't need to file maybe there were other things we could do to manage that risk so if you use this that would be our our only cautions make sure that it's a consultative a consultative use of the tool so that supervisors feel like they they can make informed decisions that there's someone to help them manage the risk and I think in addition to that another point I would make is it's important to periodically revisit your designations because people's duties change missions change program areas job responsibilities change and so I think that it's important to have frankly built into sort of baked into your financial closure processes a periodic revisit revisiting of your designations to make sure that you're not either over designating or under designating you know in either direction but I think that Patrick's point is well-taken is this is a risk assessment and if you have an extremely risk-averse group of supervisors you might find yourself with a list that is far longer than then and what can actually compromise the like efficiencies and the effectiveness of your of your confidential financial schools your program because you're inundated with paper that is not really serving the purpose that the system is intended to serve exactly having a stack of forms that you don't have the time or resources to ever look at that is merely serving to obscure the most dangerous positions doesn't serve anyone's interest so really the the organizational interest is a little bit in tension with the risk profile of some managers so is an ethics official it's your job to to help manage that conflict and come up with a solution that works for the agency and just for your reference this resource along with the confidential financial closure guide is on our website under the confidential financial disclosure tab helpful resources for confidential financial disclosure and you'll see this list of of tools both for filers and reviewers to use for the confidential financial closure reports we talked about q who is required to file and we said as a general proposition its if you're not a public filer eg OGS 15 or below and then as determined by the agency based on duties and responsibilities there's also a specific mention in the guide itself as well as in the about when and do special government employees when are they required to file confidential financial disclosure reports I'm just going to touch and go on this because again s GES are covered fairly extensively in the guide and if you do have questions please you know your desk officers are available to answer any questions you have but as a general proposition and as GE is going to file a confidential disclosure report if they meet the criteria that we just discussed if they serve on a federal advisory committee or if they otherwise have a substantial role in the formulation of agency policy they will not be allowed to file if they're already a public financial disclosure filer or if you have excluded them your agency has it decided to exclude them from filing because you believe that the possibility of conflicts is remote what I would submit to you is if you are in the throes of making some determinations about whether some of your SGS should or shouldn't be excluded from filing one of the things that we encounter often with SGS particularly ones who are being brought in for advisory roles is there is a I believe a misapprehension that because they're coming in to provide advice they are not in a position to actually engage in determinations or other decision-making that would be critical and therefore they're not deemed to be to have a possibility for conflicts or they're cutting possibility for conflicts is remote I think that's a misapprehension of the role of some advisory sge folks and I think that anytime you have someone who's being invited to come in to advise the agency on policy types of matters that you really should think very seriously about whether in to what extent you can honestly say that the possibility of a conflict is remote there's some additional considerations that are in the guide I'm just going to touch and go on each of these because we are all adult human beings and we all are capable of reading ourselves so I'm not going to read the guide to you there are provisions in in 904 26:32 for 904 for sub mental reporting requirements so and this can reach even to public financials closure filers so agencies have the ability with subject to prior approval from OGE to require some some filers to report additional information over and above what is required on a public financial scotia report or to a file you know ing to supplemental regulations additional confidential information that's what that's making reference to exclusions from filing agencies within your discretion have the ability to exclude positions from filing that is within your purview 904 B explains what that what those exclusion authorities are and then finally the review of confidential file our status this is basically what are the appeal rights of an employee who believes that they have inappropriately been designated as a confidential financial disclosure filer and again you'll find that in 2634 906 as well as in the review guide and I think these considerations as as a body make a lot of sense because they're really a further articulation of the responsibilities of agencies to run programs that suit their needs so not only do you have a lot of discretion about who files these reports you also have a lot of discretion about what gets filed when it gets filed which instructions are used what kind of information you're collecting so that really if you have situations that aren't well covered by our so GU form 450 and you need different information well you can work with OGE to make sure you get that different information because again what we're trying to do here is is prevent those conflicts of interest absolutely and that teed up beautifully what our next slide says which is what actually gets filed and I think you know Patrick you've sort of you know God you know knocked it right on the head of why it matters like why do we care what you what kind of form you actually file and that's because these systems are designed to in some respects be tailored to your reality on the ground now for many many people and most agencies are using the og form for 50 most filers file and OGE form for 50 and that serves the purpose for for most agencies and most individual employees but if it doesn't there is an ability for the agency to to craft an alternative reporting format and alternative reporting system for folks if the if the og form 450 doesn't give you the kind of information that you that you need to do a conflicts analysis if it's giving you too much information and just not enough of the right kind so prot with prior approval from OGE now it is something that is subject to OGE approval you can craft you can tailor a system that meets the needs for maybe just a certain category of employer in your organization maybe the 450 works for most would you have a certain type of employee that that for whom an alternative reporting format would be more appropriate that's completely within your authority again with approval from hoochie 2 to craft that and to tailor these programs to - to better serve the purpose they're intended right and I think when we look at the kinds of information the 450 collects it's very well suited to people who are in positions like contracting officers it's very well suited to people who are maybe investigating a regulating outside industry companies but where you have conflicts that arise from different kinds of relationships like maybe in your scientific communities it may be appropriate to collect different information and here we allow for that possibility as long as you have concurrence with oh gee that what you're collecting makes sense and that we concur with you but you know that's I think an important feature because we can't possibly know all of the ways the conflicts of interest can arise for executive branch officials from RCT or doji mm-hmm one final note that when I do want to emphasize this is that the og optional form for 50 a is no longer may no longer be used we have we have discontinued the use of that form now what we have told folks is that if you would like to craft your own version of what had been the form for 50 a that would be considered an alternative reporting format and you would have to go through the same sort of approval processes that you would for any sort of an alternative report or system but if folks out there would like to craft your own you may do so but you simply may not any longer use the OGE optional form 450 a okay so we're gonna we're gonna go to the guide now we're gonna pull up the guide itself because we're gonna talk about types of reports and filing deadlines so why do we care about filing deadlines Patrick well what you know other than the nuisance of having to report things by a certain you know time certain why do why do we care about filing deadlines well I think it's very important for us to be able to review these forms and advise employees before conflicts occur so yeah I tend to start with the need to file that new entrant report the timely filing of the new interim report is very very important and we realized that the practicalities of filing the new entrant mean that people will often be in the job for a little bit of time before they actually submit the form and we have taken some steps in the new regulations to try and mitigate that by requiring you to include information about the ethics rules in job announcements and offer letter isn't like but really the sooner you can get information about the potential for conflict for a new employee the more helpful you can be to that employee in avoiding conflicts of interest I think that's sort of foundational but then the periodicity of this is also important because people's financial situations change and their duties change so we need some mechanism for a periodic reconsideration of these facts because they may have changed without us or our employees realizing the significance of those changes so I think that's really why our system functions the way it does and I think particularly with the new entrant you know the worst situation we can find ourselves in is to have someone file a new entrant late and you realize they already have had a problem there's already been a conflict of interest or they're moving in the direction of a conflict of interest in some work is terribly harmed because of the kinds of actions or changes your the organization's can have to make in the way say a project is staffed mm-hm see you know I think that that timeliness is sort of foundational to the system but then the the periodic reconsideration of this is helpful because thank you change mm-hmm so I think I think this is something that we really need to sort of focus on when we're looking at the due dates for particularly for new entrant reports and new entrant filings are tricky we know that from an administrative standpoint this is one of the hardest things one of the hardest things for agencies to make sure they're getting right and they're getting timely notification of the onboarding of new employees this is an area where it's really critical to have a good working relationship with whatever part of your organization can assist you in identifying these folks as quickly as possible because I think we if we if we consider a new entrant filing kind of like getting a baseline sort of like a baseline sense of the health of the individual and the work that they're going to be doing and sort of the annual report being their yearly checkup to make sure that everything's okay but we want to start out with a good clean baseline you know report for the individual to make sure that you know ethically speaking they're healthy to move forward with the work that they're going to be doing and so time is of the essence with that so while well the new entrant has to be filed within 30 days of assuming the duties of the covered position I think we we all recognize that assuming the covered position can take on a variety of forms so I want to talk a memory flea about the ways in which new entrants occur new entrants can occur if you're bringing in someone new to the agency so it is a new hire from outside of the agency and a new entrant report can be triggered by that in two separate ways one you do have the ability to prospectively ask individuals to file a 450 in consideration for the position such that you're actually looking at it before the offer is is being extended so that's one way to capture new hires and maybe do that for really high-risk folks but then there's also the people who are coming in that are newly hired that have been on boarded and you got to find out about them within 30 days of they're actually coming on board I think that's one of the areas where I think people have some have some difficulty but that's not even the most difficult kinds of new hires or new entrants I should say new entrants can also be people who are already within your organization and they have either been promoted into a position that's a covered position that's a confidential filing position so they might they were previously encumbering an on filing position and now for through some mechanism they are now encumbering a filing position finding out about those folks can be particularly tricky but the same 30 days of assuming the the covered position still applies for those new entrant filers and they are new intern filers unless they're coming from a from a covered position no I think this is a good example of this being an agency program it's not an agency ethics office program I requires the cooperation of a lot of people within your organization to make it function properly and part of the challenge of getting that accomplished is making sure that these other officials in your organization's your supervisors Human Resources officers understand the importance of this work because if they don't understand the reason for doing this it's very difficult for them to decide how to prioritize the work so if you go to them and you say you know I need to know this so that this person can fill out this form well if they don't know why we fill out the form or the danger of not getting the form it's very difficult to assess whether or not that should be a priority or not so I think it's important that everyone when we're talking about this this system to others and organizations understand what we're trying to accomplish and for whose benefit we're trying to accomplish this because really this is an effort by the ethics office to protect the integrity of the work of the agency we don't really do this for the health of the ethics office right and the final new entrant situation I think which which may very well be the hardest of all is when you have an employee who for whatever reason maybe is temporarily performing duties within their current position so their position isn't currently designated as a filing position but for whatever reason they have assumed certain duties for the for a year or for two years that actually now put them in a position where they probably should be filing a confidential financial disclosure form now that's an that's a situation where really your supervisors would be the ones who would be best situated to sort of spot that and to descend to to alert you to the fact that an employee has now assumed duties that should require them to file an ogee form for 50 but just to just so that we're all you know sort of thinking about the manifold ways in which a new entrant report can can become required now the rest of the the guide talks about exceptions to the filing requirement I'm not going to read you the guide again so the the information about the exceptions to the filing requirement are there the reporting periods for the new entrant report are also listed at the bottom there and what I just described about somebody acquire or having new duties is is actually discussed in on page 10 under newly designated positions where it says that if an agency has already determined that the duties of a position require financial disclosure prior to an employee's entry into a position the employee files a new entrant report upon assuming the duties but however an agency may make this determination for a position that an employee already occupies and the incumbent employee in this case would file a new entry report within 30 days of the agency designating the position as requiring confidential financial disclosure so in every single one of these iterations that I talked about the same applies the 30-day gets triggered by the designation to a covered position so that's that's that's all elaborated herein in the guide itself I think administrative leave this is challenging but the reason it's challenging isn't because oh geez being mean to you okay it's challenging because the conflict profile of individuals within your organization is a dynamic situation it is dynamic yes those duties change positions become vacant people take on and divide up those duties and sometimes they bring with them the potential for conflict of interest and to the greatest extent possible it's in your agency's interest to manage that potential for conflict of interest we know it's not going to work perfectly in every case but we do want to suggest that you should make every effort to do that because the prevention of conflicts really renounced to the benefit of the agency and its programs and that's what we're really trying to do here and again I think that to the greatest extent that you can have supervisors and others on the ground who are who are experiencing this in you know in a timely way to be the eyes and ears and to have some sensibility and awareness that it is part of their duty to maybe spot for some of this stuff that that that way you're not having to rely entirely on formal processes you can rely on informal awareness to to help you identify these situations and sort of quick notice we're approaching the end of the calendar year at next year's new training year begins January one this is a good area of training for supervisors if you do special training for supervisors helping them to detect situations where there's a change in the conflict profile among their staff members and training them to alert the ethics office is a very valuable set of skills that you can help them develop so if that's something that you think your organization needs consider including that in your training plan for supervisors this year it's an excellent suggestion yeah so the other reporting category in under 450 filing is annual reports and the again the criteria for the requirement to file is here if you've served in a position for more than 60 days during a calendar year you file an annual report the following February 15th of the following year we talk about how do you count the number of consecutive calendar days for purposes of that 60 day mark the the the guide also talks about you know when what are exceptions to the filing requirement and the biggest exception to the filing requirement is effectively that there is no termination report required that if someone terminates the position before the annual report is due there is no report due so unlike the public financials closure system we have an annual or an incumbent filing but we do not have a termination filing the reporting period is listed here we're going to be discussing that more with when we get into the actual form itself over the the next two sessions moving between covered positions I think this is a good thing for you to to review if you do have people who who if you if you tend to lend people to agencies or people are moving to your agency from another agency this is this articulates who should collect the report sharing between agencies for people who are moving between agencies sharing copies of reports that have been filed all of that is discussed here in the guide I just want to highlight that and alert you to it so if you have people who move from one agency to the other this will give you some guidance on how to handle their their filing requirements now the next page on page 11 we give considerable time and attention to this and I would just encourage you that if you have special government employees who are operating within your organization their filing requirements are quite unique SGS will always end only file a new entrant fine aunt confidential financial disclosure report they do it within 30 days of starting their covered position and then if they are reappointed or redesignated each year they file a new entrant report each year upon that redesignate in a reappointment they own always only ever file a new entrant report there are multiple exceptions to the filing requirement that again I'm not going to cover in any detail here because I think it would behoove you if you have s GE s to get very familiar with the guidance that's in this particular guide due date considerations as well this is particularly with respect to Federal Advisory Committee Act folks they're required to file their reports before they render any advice or an event no later than the first committee meeting so if your s GES happened to be faka advisory committee s GE s there are special considerations for those folks so you know for SG ease a lot of the difficulty and complexity here is that different things apply depending upon the type of s GE or the service that they're performing if they are just someone who happens to be basically a part-time or temporary appointment person but they're not serving in an advisory committee capacity the considerations are different than they would be for someone serving on a Federal Advisory Committee Act committee so I just strongly encourage you to thoroughly peruse the guide and the and the instructions that are in the guide and I think that's that's a good point because I think a lot of folks think that the special government employee category is some magical category that's creates special responsibilities and freedoms and filing requirements and what-have-you but really all it is is a designation about how many days someone works yes right it's a it's accounting exercise it tells you how many days someone is expected to work in a year so the similarities and differences between people who are expected to serve less than a full time capacity or just as various and sundry as they are with any other category of employee so making categorical statements about the filing requirements of special government employees is as ridiculous as making categorical statements about the filing requirements of full-time employees yes because it's really just an exercise in how many days do you come to the office and that doesn't have any bearing on the kinds of work you might do yeah exactly so just pay extra special attention if you do have any s GES whether their advisory committee SGS or not pay special attention to this section of the of the of the guide because it does make reference to some informal advisory opinions that og has rendered on the subject as well in addition to the the common situations that we encounter which are new entrant filers annual filers and then sge filers who are their own special brand of new entrant filer we also addressed in the guide situations when someone is serving in an acting capacity if you have situations where you have someone who is temporarily assigned duties in a position that has been designated as a covered position this this part of the guide is going to help walk you through when a new entrant report would be triggered by that acting capacity functioning and when an annual report would be required depending upon how long the person was in the acting capacity if these are situations that you find yourself in the guide addresses it expressly right and the reason we're concerned with acting capacity is because we're really concerned with the potential for conflict yes someone can have a potential for conflict when they're acting in a position just as easily if they encumber the position on a full-time no terminus date basis precisely so we need to be concerned about that equally yeah it's the duties of the position that are triggering the filing and if you verse if you are even temporarily assuming the duties of the position then you are if so facto encumbering a position that the agency has determined is at a risk for conflict of interest and so a forum for 50 or some financial disclosure or confidential financials closure report is required in addition we have many times folks get detailed from one federal agency to another and so again we've incorporated some guidance in this document with respect to how do we handle an individual who's been detailed to another agency and we talk about what happens if and we consider each of these circumstances if the individual is a filer in their host agency but they're not going to be a filer in the agency to which they've been detailed if conversely the employee is detailed to a position that's going to be a covered position although they didn't hold a covered position in their host agency and the situation where they have they are going to be encumbering a covered position in both places so if you have any of those iterations of that situation we discuss it in this section of the of the guide right I think when you read the guide you'll see that it's directed towards managing the conflicts wherever they apply because you left a position where there was no risk of conflict and he went to a position where there is risk conflict yes we still need to manage that situation right and I think that there's always some question about the the level of cooperation that should exist between agencies in terms of sharing these and who should take responsibility for collecting the report and we address that we address that in the in the guide and to the extent that that your question doesn't seem to be explicitly answered by the guidance in the in this in the guide then we would obviously tell you please contact your desk officer and your desk officer can help you suss through or whatever peculiar fact pattern you might have that if the guide is not is not helping you to answer whatever question you have the guide also talks about intergovernmental personnel Act detailees we know this is an issue when folks are bringing in people from outside of government and also when people are sending their folks out to detailee positions outside of government so this address is briefly the the intergovernmental personnel Act detail these situations and then finally individuals who are not government employees we often get questions about whether and to what extent contractor employees or members of federal advisory committees who are not considered to be employees whether in to what extent agencies are permitted to collect confidential financial disclosure forms from them the answer is generally speaking you may not they are not employees and they are not subject to these requirements but just if you have questions about that know that the guide also addresses that issue as well okay so the the final the final aspect of that we want to talk to you about are making sure that you have agency written procedures so everything that we've talked about up to this point having to with from designating filers and how you go about designating them how often you revisit your designations to what forms you're using to whether or not you're using any alternative reporting requirements to what are your policies for collecting identifying collecting new entrant reports and annual reports and reports from your SGS all of those things should be reduced to writing in our document which which which contains all of that your procedures for doing all of that so for identifying identification collection and review it should also include any discussion of extensions and penalties under the regulation and the guide also talks about this as well starting on page 50 talks about the agency's responsibility and authority to issue a filing extensions for filers what the criteria are for that what the number of days are that you're authorized to do that that's discussed in the guide it includes the servicing combat zone or service during a period of national emergency extension provisions if you're implementing those as well that would be something that you would want to reduce or have included in your written procedures while there are no filing penalties under the confidential financial disclosure system as there are under the public financials closure system agencies may still are authorized to take what you consider to be appropriate action which could include an adverse action against an employee who has not filed or has filed a false or incomplete or late report so you have the authority to engage in some form of penalty administration even though it's not a filing fee like we have under the public financials closure system exactly that the law doesn't specify what the penalty is but all of those administrative tools that your agency has to gain compliance with with management directives are available to you and it's important not to forget that because again if we don't receive the information in a timely way we cannot assist employees in avoiding conflicts of interest which means we can't assist the agency in avoiding conflicts of interest exactly and then finally there are records man at records management issues are also addressed in the guide and that's also something that should be included in your agency written procedures which is how are you allowing for access to your forms how are you protecting them from access and and how are you allowing the forms to be used and then ultimately there is a retention period that you're required to that you're required to retain the reports and but there's also a requirement to destroy them once or exceed definitely once you've exceeded the retention period so again that's discussed in the guide and those are also things that should be included in your agency written procedures and do you want to expand a little bit to Patrick on you know OGE when it comes to do a program review is most definitely going to look to and ask you for your written procedures there's a good reason that is a good reason but what is what is an overarching good reason for we we see this this all the time is one of the disruptive most obstructive things that happen to agency ethics programs is turnover in any personnel who administer the program and if you don't have sound written procedures that turnover can be sort of catastrophic to the functioning of the program so having good written procedures is really good succession planning it also allows you to formalize the relationships you need to make this program work you cannot run an effective confidential system out of the ethics office if you're in a program of any size unless you personally know everyone in the organization and what they're up to all the time you're gonna need some help somewhere be that designation notification of personnel changes awareness of what the duties and responsibilities of the positions are grid procedures allow you to document and make durable those relationships and those vectors of cooperation so they can really be a benefit to your program to have this stuff formalized so that everyone agrees on what their their roles and responsibilities are in the agency's confidential financial disclosure program absolutely so there Patrick is just beautifully articulated all the reasons why I why agency written procedures are really to your benefit it is not just a bureaucratic exercise that og wants to come in and take a look at it is it is for the benefit and the continuity of your of your program and it is useful I think to be able to pull it out when you are trying to if you're having to rebuild or build a new relationships with other parts of the organization if you have standing and I like standing agreements with those organizations that you have reduced to writing in your agency written procedures it gives you something concrete to point to it may be a point of negotiation with that organization it will be a point because it'll be a dynamic document as are all of these types of data but once you've done that work to capture that is it really good it really helps to strengthen those those relationships and strengthen those ways of cooperating okay so that is our overview of the system for today if you can join us if you're able to join us next Tuesday we're going to be talking about the forum and if you look at section two of the guide that's really what we're going to be relying upon is our guide for next week's session we're gonna be walking through every part of the forum and discussing you know what it is why it is what you should likely see there so that you can know in anticipation and you can better advise employees as to how they how they can best fill out fill out the form excellent so we hope you can all join us next week for part two of this broadcast this like all broadcasts recording will be available on the course page immediately upon the conclusion if you found this to be too basic and understanding feel free to use this with other members of your staff isolate these these become on-demand resources as soon as we're done with the live broadcast and we want them to be tools that agencies can use for the professional development of the ethics officials in their in their agencies so we hope you do that and we've given you a pretty version of the slides as well so that if you want to do it if you want to give your your employees a something that's a little visually more attractive than the slides that we that we shared with you today we've given you the pretty copy as well absolutely so thanks very much for joining us today Cheryl and thanks to all of you and we look forward to seeing you next week thanks