March 2, 2016
OGE’s staff is hard at work preparing for the second National Government Ethics Summit here in Washington, D.C., on March 8-10, 2016. On March 7, 2016, OGE will also present a full-day symposium to provide beginner and advanced training for hundreds of government ethics officials who review financial disclosure reports.
The theme of the 2016 Summit is “The Presidential Transition.” The executive branch ethics program plays a critical role in supporting our nation’s peaceful transitions of power. During the next Presidential transition, ethics officials will review the financial disclosure reports of Presidential nominees. They will need to work expeditiously to make sure nominees are free of conflicts of interest, so top leadership positions can be filled quickly. They will also advise departing officials on post-employment restrictions, train incoming employees on conflicts of interests laws and the Standards of Conduct, and support new leaders in maintaining high ethical standards within their agencies.
By providing ethics officials with training and useful resources, OGE is working to ensure that ethics officials have the capacity to deliver a smooth transition. As part of this effort, the 2016 Summit will provide members of the government ethics community with opportunities to deepen their knowledge of the ethics rules, share lessons learned through extensive practical experience, listen to viewpoints from outside government, and build connections with fellow ethics officials who can lend a hand in resolving complex ethics issues.
As with our previous Summit in September 2014, we are again leveraging federal facilities to keep down costs –thanks to our partner agency, the Federal Housing Finance Agency, for supporting the executive branch ethics program by generously hosting this event at its facilities!
Registration has closed, but we are opening much of the Summit to the public by live-streaming sessions online. At the 2014 Summit, we experimented with live-streaming key sessions, and we left the recordings online. This time, we will expand our online offerings by livestreaming from two separate training rooms simultaneously throughout the 2016 Summit. I invite you to tune in live or watch the recordings later.