IEC Journal

Agency Model Practices

The May upgrades to OGE's list of Agency Model Practices are welcome. Lists like this have multiple benefits, so let's hope this valuable section can be kept updated on a regular basis.

 

US OGE Mailing List Archives

Do you ever wish you could locate old e-mails from OGE's mailing list? There is an easily searchable online archive, including the September 16, 2002 welcome message from then-Director Amy Comstock up to the latest OGE missive.

It's available at:

http://listserv.access.gpo.gov/archives/oge-ethicsinfo-l.html

 

There's an easy procedure to get a password.

OGE Calendar: December

Excerpt from the 2008 OGE Calendar:

December--Remember, covered employees are required to receive annual ethics training before the end of the calendar year.

December 31--Today marks the end of the Public Financial Disclosure reporting period, except for the reporting period of Part II of Schedule C and Part I of Schedule D, which continue up to the date of filing. (5 CFR § 2634.308(a))

December 31--Today marks the end of the Confidential Financial Disclosure reporting period. (5 CFR § 2634.908(a))

Cusick Article

The most recent issue of The Journal of Public Inquiry, the professional publication for Inspectors General, has an article by OGE Director Ric Cusick entitled "Outsourcing Public Integrity." The issue containing the article is available in PDF format. It's a 12 Mb download. The Cusick article begins on page 63.

OGE Calendar: November

Excerpt from the 2008 OGE Calendar:

November 1 Reminder: Only 61 days remain in the Public Financial Disclosure calendar year. Remember that employees need to serve in a position for 61 days or more to file. (5 CFR § 2634.204)

November 30 DUE TO OGE TODAY: Agencies must submit an annual update of current agency separate component designations for 18 U.S.C. § 207(c). Agencies need not reply if their department or agency currently has no designated components and they do not wish to request the designation of any component. (5 CFR § 2641.201(e)(3)(ii))

November 30 Agencies must submit an annual update of positions previously exempted from senior employee designation under 18 U.S.C. § 207(c). (5 CFR § 2641.201(d)(3)(ii))

November 30 The 1353 travel report for payments of travel accepted from non-federal sources is due today. Agencies must submit either a positive or a negative report. The 1353 travel report should cover the period of April 1, 2008 - September 30, 2008. (31 U.S.C. 1353)

OGE Calendar: October

Reminder: The October IEC meeting will be held on Wednesday, October 8, rather than the usual first Thursday.

Excerpt from the 2008 OGE Calendar:

October 31 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 second 45-day extensions are due today.

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.

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!

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.