U.S. Office of Government Ethics
1201 New York Ave., NW
Suite 500
Washington, DC  20005-3917




	                                December 17, 2004
					DO-04-037


MEMORANDUM

TO:	   Designated Agency Ethics Officials 

FROM:	   Marilyn L. Glynn
           Acting Director

Subject:   Enhanced Electronically Fillable SF 278 PDF Form


I am pleased to announce the availability of two enhanced versions of our
electronically fillable SF 278 PDF form.  One version meets the accessibility
requirements of Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act Amendments of 1998
(Section 508).  Section 508 requires Federal agencies to ensure that all
information they provide electronically is accessible to employees and members
of the public with disabilities according to certain prescribed accessibility
standards.  This version was programmed in a manner that makes it accessible to
those persons with vision impairments.  The second version is a non-accessible
version of the electronically fillable SF 278 PDF form that does not use the
current screen reader technology.

The programming for both versions of these electronically fillable forms has
been revised to allow users to insert more information in various data fields,
generate automatically unlimited additional schedules (only available in the
nonaccessible version), and save and reuse a completed form without having to
purchase Adobe Acrobat software.  Through our purchase of special licensing and
software from Adobe, users can now save a completed form and generate unlimited
additional schedules by using the latest version of the Adobe Reader, Version 6,
which is available for free from the Adobe website (www.adobe.com).

It could take approximately 20 minutes to download the nonaccessible version of
our electronically fillable SF 278 PDF form if the user does not have a high-
speed Internet connection.  Because this may be impractical for some users, we
are providing a link on our website to a Department of Defense website that has
an electronically fillable Microsoft Excel software version of the SF 278.  This
Excel version will take users less time to download but will require users to
have Microsoft Excel on their computers to complete and save the form. It will
not, however, have all the features of our enhanced nonaccessible version.

As other electronically fillable versions of the SF 278 form become known to us
and are posted on the Internet, we will provide links on our website to agency
websites that have the form. Users may then choose the electronic version that
they find most suitable to them.

The enhanced versions of the SF 278 PDF form can be found at:
www.usoge.gov/pages/forms_pubs_otherdocs/forms_pubs_other pg3.html.