IEC Journal

Continue Receiving Posts by E-mail? (Was: "Updating RSS Feeds")

Missing your e-mail fix of IEC Journal postings? There may be a reason.

As part of an upgrade of their system, RSS FWD (sometimes referred to as "RssFwd") sent out an e-mail last Friday (archived at their web site) announcing that subscribers would have to re-subscribe to their new system to continue receiving service. Learning that some users at his agency had mistakenly deleted the announcement e-mail as spam, the ever-alert Wayne Johnson drew the change to our attention.

As noted recently, IEC Journal recommends our users obtain updates via RSS readers. We do not endorse RSS FWD nor the similar service Feedblitz, but we provide information about them for the benefit of our users who find receiving updates by e-mail more convenient. We would prefer to operate our own mailing list, but resource constraints make it impractical at this time.

Some users have reported better satisfaction with the similar Feedblitz service (free, like RSS FWD). While we assume RSS FWD's service will improve as a result of their upgrade, those interested in exploring alternatives to RSS FWD may wish to experiment with Feedblitz. Our September 15 post has subscription information for both services. Let us know if you have feedback about either service you would like to share with other IEC members.

Again, thanks to Wayne for the tip. We live or die by the help from him and other unselfish IEC members.

Updated Oct. 1: A few small improvements, including more descriptive title.

OGE Vacancy - Ethics Specialist, GS-14

http://jobsearch.usajobs.gov/ftva.asp?seeker=1&JobID=76062543

OGE has posted a vacancy announcement for a Government Ethics Specialist, GS-301-14.  The successful candidate will serve as a senior desk officer in the Program Services Division, Office of Agency Programs, U.S. Office of Government Ethics.  The announcement closes Tuesday, October 14.  Questions about the position should be directed to Trish Zemple, Associate Director, Program Services Division.  The vacancy announcement is linked here. 

Ex-CIA Official Pleads Guilty

The CIA's former top administrator pleaded guilty yesterday to steering agency contracts to a defense contractor and concealing their relationship, making Kyle "Dusty" Foggo the highest-ranking member of a federal intelligence or law enforcement agency to be convicted of a crime, officials said.  Full coverage is available from the Washington Post and NY Times.

Wednesday, October 8th Meeting

As part of our upcoming "transition" series, the presenters at our Wednesday, October 8^th meeting will discuss the vacancy act and records retention.  (Please note that is a departure from our usual Thursday meeting day.)  These topics are quite relevant for appointments between now and the end of the calendar year, and for disposition of records before January.  Our presenters will be Paul Koffsky, the Deputy General Counsel for Personnel and Health Policy at the Defense Department, and Gary Stern, an attorney at the National Archives who specializes in records retention.

In addition, for those who attended the OGE Conference in Orlando earlier this month, if you have suggestions of possible topics to be included in the upcoming IEC calendar, please feel free to raise them at our October meeting.

As usual, we will meet from 12:15-1:30 in the OTS auditorium, 1700 G Street, N.W., Washington, DC (the corner of 17th and G Streets).  Individuals who are on the IEC roster need not pre-register for this meeting.  Ethics officials who are not on our roster but who wish to attend our October meeting can pre-register by contacting Pat Carney not later than Monday, October 6th. Those who are neither on the IEC roster nor pre-registered can still be admitted to our meeting site by showing a Government ID to OTS Security personnel.

For future planning, please note that our November meeting is scheduled for Friday, November 14^th, which also represents a departure from our usual meeting day practice.

OGE issue Guide on Reporting Select Financial Instruments

The Office of Government Ethics issues "Public Financial Disclosure: A Guide to reporting Selcted Financial Instruments."

Presidential campaigns & Senate Urged to expedite appointment process

By Kellie Lunney

Designating senior career employees to serve temporarily in critical agency jobs during a presidential transition is not sufficient to maintain government continuity, the head of a good government group said on Thursday.

"We have an amazing career workforce that is under stress," said Max Stier, president and chief executive officer of the Partnership for Public Service. "But it is not a substitute [for appointees] and won't be viewed as a substitute by the new president, or by the leadership he will bring in ultimately."

Full story: http://www.govexec.com/story_page.cfm?articleid=41055&dcn=e_gvet

DoD SOCO Advisory: 2008 Training Available

http://www.dod.mil/dodgc/defense_ethics/2008_Advisories/ADV_0807.htm

OIG Reports on MMS Allegations

The main page of the Department of the Interior OIG web site currently has links to three reports with details of its investigations into the Minerals Management Service. In case they are moved from that location for archiving, here are direct links to the PDF versions, which will probably not change:

• Gregory W. Smith
• MMS Oil Marketing Group - Lakewood
• Federal Business Solutions Contracts

Thanks to an IEC member for suggesting we add the permanent links. The quality of this web site depends on member contributions and we welcome your input.

OGE GS 13-15 Jobs Filled; Other Positions Open

To save some work for those considering last-minute application forms:

As warned in the original announcement, the two OGE grade GS 13-15 jobs announced here earlier have been filled before the Sept. 30 deadline. Per Barbara Mullen-Roth, OGE is no longer accepting applications for these postions. As of today, OGE is still recruiting for two positions at the GS-13 level.

Updated: Sept. 26 to specify level of two remaining job openings.

Movement on IG Bill

Government Executive reports on progress toward a bill that would increase Inspector General independence.

Ethics In Federal Contracting Course

We have no experience with the vendor, but the Ethics in Federal Contracting course looks like it could have some value. The announcement gives the "Course Objectives" as:

After successful completion of this training course, the student will be able to:

• Explain the meaning and purpose of ethics, particularly as related to federal government employees engaged in acquisition
• Identify and avoid problem areas through awareness of and adherence to ethics laws and regulations

Role of Ethics in an Inspector General Investigation

Thanks to Tom Lehrich for providing the slide show used in the presentation he did with Al Larsen at the OGE conference last week on the topic The Role of Ethics in an Inspector General Investigation.

OGE's Internet Cafe at the conference was so popular that many people were not able to download the supplemental materials there. We will be glad to post here any conference materials that did not make their way onto the flash drives distributed at the conference.

Successful OGE Conference

Last week's Office of Government Ethics conference was another success.  Based on attendee comments, the presenters were generally well received.  Here are a few of the other well-implemented features that come to mind:

• The Exhibit Room was a good showcase of prize-winning educational and related products, including a slickly produced looping videotape.
• The Internet Cafe facilitated access with home offices.
• The full-color daily bulletins were a useful way of communicating with attendees.
• The half-hour sessions for demos, "ask the expert" time, etc. were a worthwhile innovation.
• The use of USB thumb drives to store handouts was a hit again. Handouts that were too late to make their way onto the thumb drives will be available from OGE by e-mail (Teresa Weakley, tlweake -- AT -- OGE -- DOT -- gov), and possibly their web site.
• And last but not least, the Rosen Centre Hotel met with general approval.

All in all, the conference was another feather in OGE's cap.

P.S. Apologies for the duplicate posts Friday about Congressional hearings. The Wi-Fi connection from Orlando airport was so slow I didn't realize first attempt had already been posted. I removed one from the web site, but you may get two copies via e-mail.

Update: Sept. 23, Corrected Teresa Weakley's e-mail address. As a reminder, we try to disguise e-mail addresses we post because web site postings are the number one source of spammer targets.

Reminder: OGE Jobs Closing Sept. 30

Update Sept. 25: These jobs have already been filled, as OGE warned could happen in the original announcement. Save your resumes!

IG: Attitudes at Interior "Decidedly Different"

This morning's NY Times has a story about the House Natural Resources Committee's hearing on alleged ethical violations at the Minerals Management Service. The agency head, Department of Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne, indicated he intended to comply with all recommendations of his agency's Inspector General, Earl E. Devaney and added:

This process will be completed as swiftly as possible, and we will examine the full spectrum of disciplinary actions, including termination.

The Times noted:

    But both the secretary and inspector general stressed that they believed 99.9 percent of Interior Department employees were hard-working and ethical. Mr. Devaney said the atmosphere at the royalty agency now “is decidedly different.”

OGE Conference: IGs & Incoming Senior Officials

Ric Cusick's keynote address for the Office of Goverment Ethics conference furthered the conference theme of "Transition" with many good ideas, including the thought that senior incoming officials should reduce their chances of getting in trouble by familiarizing themselves with previous IG recommendations (usually, but not always, the result of an audit) and the subjects of previous IG investigations.

This idea sounds like a real winner, and smart IGs may wish to provide summarizes to facilitate such orientation. The sample redacted memo provided here a few months ago may be useful in implementing Mr. Cusick's suggestion.

Time For Hatch Act Reminder?

With a very close race expected in this fall's Presidential election, numerous observers are predicting record high turnouts. A pamphlet from the Office of Special Counsel web site entitled Political Activity and the Federal Employee is a good resource for educating employees about the dangers of inappropriate political activity.

We do have one suggestion: While the desire to keep everyone out of trouble is understandable, try to avoid inadvertently giving the impression that any political activity by a federal employee is risky and should be avoided. This is inaccurate, and does a disservice to our employees and our democracy. The OSC pamphlet referenced above does an excellent job of putting allowed and prohibited activities in perspective.

E-Mail Update Option Summary

A query from a new IEC member who had difficulty subscribing to our e-mail echo prompted the realization that an updated summary of subscription information is appropriate. First, though, a reminder:

The IEC Journal offers a free RSS feed. If you would like to receive instant updates whenever you want, the best option is to use an RSS reader. These programs will give you easy automatic updates of IEC Journal, and any other RSS-equipped web sites you choose, any time you want them. Alternatives are available:

E-mail Updates

The IEC does not presently operate an e-mail mailing list to notify members when new information is posted. Rather, we have suggested that members who want e-mail updates can use free third party e-mail "echo" services. Two such services are RssFwd and Feedblitz. We do not endorse either of these services, but note their availability for those who find them convenient.

These third party services "scrape" new postings off the web site by automated checking and then send an announcement by e-mail. These are free services, and they operate on their schedules, which may not be consistent. There is always some lag time between when we post something on the web site, and the time the echo services mail their announcements. For example, we posted a comment on outsourcing to the web site early one Tuesday morning. RssFwd sent its alert around 6:00 AM on Wednesday and FeedBlitz around 6:00 PM Wednesday.

Some users have reported trouble subscribing to RssFwd, and we have some troubleshooting tips for that service. If you are aware of an e-mail echo service better than Feedblitz and RssFwd, let us know and we will be glad to pass your recommendation along.

We would like to add an IEC-operated mailing list to our services, but it would require either:

1. One or more volunteers to maintain the mailing list and manually send an e-mail each time the web site is updated.
2. A volunteer with the technical knowledge needed to set up an automatic e-mail update procedure. This could be through scripting, or perhaps assisting in moving the web site from TypePad to another platform that supports automated e-mail echoes. We believe Movable Type offers this feature, and there are probably others.

If you have suggestions or would like to volunteer, we would love to hear from you.

2008 Ethics Program Awards

OGE has announced its 2008 Ethics Program Awards.

Still More Great Search Tips

Thanks to IEC member Ethan A. Carrier for passing along the following excellent tips for searching the OGE web site:

You can also search DAEOgrams like so:

site:usoge.gov/ethics_guidance/daeograms

or Advisory Opinions like so:

site:usoge.gov/ethics_guidance/opinons

You may have noticed that you get three copies of each DAEOgram or AO because they exist as three types of files (txt, html, and pdf). If you want to avoid getting your results in triplicate, then you can limit what type of files are returned as results by adding:

filetype:txt or filetype:html or filetype:pdf

So, putting it all together, if I wanted to search the OGE Advisory Opinions for information on widely attended gatherings, I might do it like this:

"widely attended gatherings" site:usoge.gov/advisory_opinions filetype:pdf

You'll see that the results include only OGE Advisory Opinions, and only in the PDF filetype. This really is just scratching the surface of Google's search features, but I hope it is helpful!

Post Weighs in on Dept. of Interior Story

This morning's Washington Post has a front page article on the DOI Inspector General allegations reported here last night. One point noted may have particular resonance for standards of conduct counselors:

Many employees identified in the report told investigators that they didn't think ethics rules applied to them because of their "unique" role in the agency and that they needed to socialize with industry representatives for "market intelligence," according to the report.

Many agencies have employees whose jobs entail interacting with industry, and it sounds like these jobs could be potential flash points.

NYTimes Article on Ethical Failures at Minerals Mgmt Service

The Interior Department agency that collects oil and gas royalties has been caught up in a broad ethics scandal — including allegations of financial self-dealing, accepting gifts from energy companies, cocaine use and sexual misconduct.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/11/washington/11royalty.html?_r=1&th=&oref=slogin&emc=th&pagewanted=print

IG Alleges Ethics Lapses at Dept. of Interior

The Department of Interior Inspector General has issued several reports alleging serious ethics problems at the Department of the Interior, specifically at the the Minerals Management Service. The New York Times has a related article. Pro Bono Publica has brief summaries of the reports.

Ethics Specialist Vacancies at OGE

OGE is recruiting for two vacancies, with promotion potential to GS-13:

• 08-OGE-018
• 08-OGE-019

Closing date for both is Sept. 29.

Education and Communication Award Winners

Congratulations to the winners of OGE's 2008 Education and Communication Award:

• Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
• Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation
• Federal Emergency Management Agency
• Federal Energy Regulatory Commission
• Federal Trade Commission
• Office of the Director of National Intelligence
• Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation
• U.S. Agency for International Development
• U.S. Air Force
• U.S. Army, CECOM Life Cycle Management Command
• U.S. Department of Agriculture
• U.S. Department of the Interior
• U.S. Department of State
• U.S. Department of the Treasury – Departmental Offices

I hope to learn more about their achievements at this month's OGE conference, including “Ask Cagney the Ethics Dog.”

Whether or not you were a winner this year, if your organization has training aids that you think would benefit other agencies, please contact us about sharing them with the community through IEC Journal. Good ideas deserve wide circulation. You can always find our archive of training aids, sorted chronologically by the date posted, by selecting the category Training Aids in the left margin.

Treasury Attorney Vacancy GS-13/15

The Department of Treasury has an Attorney-Advisor (Senior Counsel for Ethics) vacancy for a GS-13/15.  The job closes on September 21, 2008.  See USAJobs announcement 08-DO-477PA .  Click here

More OGE Web Site Search Tips

Via an e-mail, OGE endorsed the search tip offered here last week, with OGE Program Analyst Paul Bergstrand going one step better. Paul noted the possibilty of saving even more time by creating a custom Google search engine for searching the OGE site. This eliminates the need to type in the "site:" prefix, and also allows the option of having government sites (like OGE) and non-profit sites to have search results appear without ads.

We have implemented Paul's suggestion by adding a link in the right margin entitled "Custom Search OGE Web Site." This is a Google Beta service (meaning they are still testing it). Let us know what kind of results you have, so we can decide whether to implement similar searching for IEC Journal.

Postal employee pleads guilty

Former postal employee pleads guilty to stealing checks from mail, abuses public trust and position. http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/local/howard/bal-ho.mail07sep07,0,7935979,print.story

OGE Guidance on Reviewing Final PAS Financial Disclosure

In anticipation of the upcoming change in administrations, OGE has issued new guidance on review and certification of mandatory public financial disclosure termination reports (SF 278s).

DHS IG warns to avoid even the appearance of a conflict of interest

Even though IG found funding selection justified and no personal conflict of interest, IG suggested office take steps to reduce even the appearance of bias in its selection process.

See report at http://www.dhs.gov/xoig/assets/mgmtrpts/OIG_08-85_Aug08.pdf

See GovExec article at http://www.govexec.com/story_page.cfm?articleid=40895&dcn=e_gvet

Reminder: No September Meeting

This is a reminder that because of the OGE Ethics Conference, which will take place September 16-19 in Orlando, there will be no IEC meeting this month.  The next IEC meeting is scheduled for Wednesday, October 8th.  Details on that meeting will follow later this month, but please put the 8th on your calendar and note that this will be a departure from our usual first Thursday meeting date. 

New DOD SOCO Advisory Available

The newest edition of the excellent Department of Defense Standards of Conduct Office SOCO Advisory is now available. It covers: 

• Gifts to Service Members and Their Families From Non-Federal Sources.
• Army Contracting Officer Pleads Guilty to Involvement in $9 Million Procurement Scandal.
• Postal Service Case Addresses Improper Use of a Government Credit Card.
• Employee's Removal for Violation of the Hatch Act Is Ordered by the MSPB.
• Former Department of Interior Official Pleads Guilty to Conflicts of Interest Charge.

DOD offers subscriptions to announcements of new issues.

Dept of Treasury ADAEO/DAGC vacancy (SL)

The Department of the Treasury seeks a Deputy Assistant General Counsel (Ethics).  Please click on the link below for more information.  The position closes on September 16, 2008.

http://jobsearch.usajobs.gov/ftva.asp?seeker=1&JobID=74847504 

Web Site Searching Alternatives

While welcome and very effective overall, the recent upgrade of the OGE web site has a few downsides, including changing the links to many pages. Many older links no longer work. A workaround I sometimes use when searching the archives here at IEC Journal may also save time when searching the OGE site:

For example, for our September 1 post I needed to obtain the new address for the USOGE 2008 Schedule of Important Ethics Dates. When I entered the search term "Calendar" into the OGE web site's search engine, after some delay I eventually received the response "Your Search returned 367 Records." Making matters worse, the search engine displays only five "hits" at a time.

Scrolling through 73 screens of search results in search of the one page I needed was not an appealing prospect, so I went to Google and entered the following search request:

site:www.usoge.gov calendar

Bingo! The calendar I was looking for was at the top of the list of search results.

Adding "site:" to the front of the OGE web site address tells Google to restrict its search to only that site. You can test it yourself. The secret? Unlike old-style search engines, Google and its closest competitors use sophisticated techniques to rank search results by relevance. The page you are looking for is more likely to be closer to the top of the results list. 

This using-an-alternate-search-engine trick won't always work, but it's a big time saver when it does. I used to use it frequently at the Department of Justice web site before they upgraded their dedicated search engine. I use it at IEC Journal on the frequent occasions when this site's dedicated search engine isn't giving me the results I want.

I use Google only because I'm more familiar with it. However, you would probably get comparable results using the top Google competitors that also use sophisticated relevancy rankings. Check their documentation to see how they restrict searches to a particular site.

Fixing Broken OGE Web Site Links

At the request of Wayne Johnson, we have posted his revisions to the materials he provided for our Nov. 9. 2007 post on initial ethics training and our Jan. 22, 2008 post on SGE training.

While clearly a large improvement, the recent upgrade to the OGE web site had the unfortunate side effect of changing the URLs, or web page addresses, to many pages on the OGE site. This breaks the existing links that other web sites, including this one, have built to OGE. Due to resource constraints, we don't plan on correcting all the broken archived links to OGE pages. We will try to correct the most important ones that come to our attention (including the ones to OGE pages in the column at right, in the hopefully-not-too-distant future). If you are aware of a key link that should be changed, let us know.

We'll be publishing some advice on finding items on the revised OGE web page soon.

OGE Calendar: September

Excerpts from the 2008 OGE Calendar:

September 15 DUE TO OGE TODAY: The Public Financial Disclosure reports of PAS, DAEO, and other persons whose Public Financial Disclosure reports are required to be forwarded to OGE for review and certification who were granted first 45-day extensions are due today.

Reminder: The late filing fee now applies to annual Public Financial Disclosure filers who were granted second 45-day filing extensions but have not submitted their reports to agency ethics officials. Remember, checks should be made payable to the U.S. Treasury. (5 CFR § 2634.704)

September 16 Reminder: 2008 New Ethics Official Conference in Orlando, FL.

September 17-19 16th National Government Ethics Conference in Orlando, FL.

September 30 Reminder: The April 1 – September 30 period for reporting payments of travel accepted from non-federal sources ends today. Agencies should begin to prepare their 1353 travel report. (31 U.S.C. 1353)