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November 19, 2001 DO-01-028 |
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MEMORANDUM
TO: Designated Agency Ethics Officials, General Counsels, and FROM: Jack Covaleski SUBJECT: Program Plan of Agency Reviews for Calendar Year 2002 |
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Attached for your information is the program plan of agency ethics reviews scheduled by the Office of Government Ethics (OGE) for the first six months of calendar year 2002. At this time we are reviewing and streamlining our review procedures, and hope to have changes in place by July, 2002. Shortly before then we will announce the plan for the remaining six months of 2002. We will attempt as much as possible to follow the schedule set forth in the attachment. We will contact the Designated Agency Ethics Official (DAEO) or designee by telephone approximately one month prior to our entrance into the agency, followed by a letter of confirmation. However, as past experience has shown, the schedule may change due to the unanticipated complexity of certain reviews or other priority work at OGE. Moreover, we realize there may have been some disruption in your work caused by the tragedies that occurred on September 11. Should there be a serious reason why you cannot receive us as scheduled, please call Ed Pratt, Chief of the Program Review Division, at 202-208-8000, ext. 1115, or Jerry Chaffinch, his assistant, at ext. 1157. To assist those of you who wish to become more familiar with our program review procedures, our Management Analysts will hold two brown-bag luncheons to discuss objectives and procedures and answer any of your questions. If you are interested in attending one of these luncheons on either Tuesday, January 15 or Thursday, January 31, 2002, please call Ilene Cranisky on 202-208-8000, ext. 1218, or Dale Christopher on ext. 1130. Attendance is open to ethics officials from all agencies, whether or not the agency is scheduled for review in 2002. Our usual practice, once a review has been completed, is to send a report to the DAEO with recommendations for improving the program. We ask that the DAEO respond to our recommendations within 60 days as to the actions he/she has taken or plans to take. We do not send our reports to the Congress, but occasionally a Congressional committee will request a report of an agency under its jurisdiction. These requests are granted and the agency DAEO is informed that we have received such a request. Moreover, we do not send copies of our reports to the news media, nor issue press releases concerning the reports. Periodically, we do release reports to the news media in response to Freedom of Information Act requests. We are continuing to ask that you complete our Agency Program Review Evaluation form after you receive the report. Please take a few moments to provide us with feedback on the usefulness of our reviews and reports, and identify areas for improvement. Thank you for all the comments you gave us this past year; they have been extremely useful in modifying our review techniques. In addition to our regular reviews, we will conduct two special projects. One project will be a review of the outside employment by certain medical personnel at the Department of Veterans Affairs. The other project will be a review of selected agencies' management of their ethics programs for advisory committees. We hope that this answers some of your questions concerning our review process. Should you have any other questions, please call Jack Covaleski, Deputy Director for Agency Programs, at 202-208-8000, ext. 1120. |
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